I made a bit of an error this past weekend. Wanting to make better use of my camera I eschewed the automatic settings I previously relied on for one that would allow me to change the shutter speed, contrast, white balance, etc. The photographs looked absolutely amazing when I saw the previews on my camera screen, but when I got home I noticed something disconcerting. You see, I had selected a high iso value, essentially making sure that I would have a fast shutter speed even in dim conditions. The trade-off is that the pictures come out incredibly grainy, looking flat rather than crisp. Take this photograph of a female gorilla for example; it looked great on my screen but is awful now that I see a larger version;
The grainy texture is made even worse when I was shooting through dusty, wet, or dirty glass, as with the black leopards;
Compare those with this photograph of a horseshoe crab I took on my trip to Delaware;
What does this mean? Well first I need more practice knowing what iso values to use and when to do so. This can be problematic with wildlife, especially if they won't sit still and pose for you. Second, I need to go back to the Bronx zoo to try again. Every time I go it's different, some days offering better opportunities than others, but I want to give things another try. The Wednesday after my math course ends (Friday of next week, yikes!) I'm going to make a return visit. Before that, though, I'll be going to the Philadelphia zoo, so there should be plenty of photos to share soon. I just hope they come out better than the ones I took on Saturday.
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Couple of modest suggestions -
* Either check reviews of your camera or do some test shots to see at what ISO the grain becomes annoying.
* Don't fuss too much about contrast, white balance, etc. when actually shooting. In particular, don't fuss a lot with getting the picture to "look just right" on the preview.
Do you have post-processing software? I mean something like Photoshop, Elements, or PaintShop Pro (there are others, of course). Here's the point - when you mess with white balance, contrast and such while taking the pic, your camera is "processing" that image using its builtin algorithms. As I understand it, that's no different than processing the image later using software.
You might want to check whether your camera can shoot RAW images. That's essentially leaving just about all of the processing for later. You still need to either use an auto setting or set basics like speed/aperture/ISO/focus, but much of the rest you can do later.
I'm no expert; I guess I'd be a "moderately advanced amateur." I use Photoshop Elements both to process and catalogue, and have been pleased with it. That's not a advertisement. I started with Elements only because I got an earlier version of it packages with a piece of hardware I bought. I suspect I could be just as happy with any of a half-dozen other choices.
Final comment - Ansel Adams said something to the effect that taking the picture was only the starting point, and that most of his work was done in the darkroom.
The point is not to be sloppy when taking the picture hoping to fix it up later, but to recognize that the initial image really is only the starting point.
Wow--I've been having problems with grainy photos,too, especially while shooting wildlife. I didn't know what the problems was, but now I do!
Thanks :)
Well, those still look great on my oversized monitor.
I'll second Scott's comment with a couple of additions. Regarding graininess, using the median filter in Photoshop will get rid of a lot of that. It takes a little experimenting, but I've always had good results. Saving in raw format is good, saving it as 48-bit raw is better. That gives you a lot more gray levels per channel, so you can do some pretty heavy color-correcting without it posterizing.
Another possibility, if your camera and the location allow for it, is to use off-camera flash. That way, you can get higher shutter speeds without resorting to high ISO values, and by having the flash off-camera, you won't end up taking a photo of the reflection of the flash in the glass.