Blurred images at Higher Resolution

[alijtaylor]

Hi I am looking for suggestions on a problem I encountered with a Sony Cybershot 4.1. where taking advantage of 4 megapixels seemed to result in blurred shots

Due to my carelessness I had my Canon Powershot S50 stolen a day before a liveaboard trip. The only camera and housing I could find where I was, in the time available, was a Sony cybershot 4.1 with the Sony Housing. So I was not familiar with it underwater. A few other folk had them on the same trip though and they advised me to shoot on low megapixels or I would get blurred images. I was shooting mainly on auto without strobe in about 15 - 25m visibility. Mainly silhouette type stuff - but even a silouette of a hammerhead or a whale shark is worth having!

The first few dives I followed their advice and was happy with the sharpness so I thought I would try the full 4 megapixels. We were shooting moving stuff, mainly sharks, and I was very unhappy with the extent to which the images were blurred. For the rest of the trip I switched back to 1MP.

On return I made an enquiry from a camera shop and was told something pretty uninformative like 'it happens with some makes - they trade off things against each other'.. I subsequently found a replacement Canon and have not had the Sony underwater again, although I am very happy with it on the surface.

I am however looking to understand what happened and wondering if there is something I could do differently to avoid it. The Sony has limited ability to manually set aperture and shutter speed but it does have a little. Unfortunately I cannot post any of the images or give details of the apertures and shutter speeds as the CDs I had downloaded 90% of my shots to were also stolen!
Any suggestions.

Alison

 

[fpoole]

Well, as best as I know, the quality doesn't affect the "Blur-ity" of a picture. Whether you take a blurry pic at high quality or low quality shouldn't make any difference at all. They may have believed that recording "Less" pix aka Low quality was faster and got the in fast thus not creating a blur, but that doesn't make sense to me...

Believe the problem lies in the settings, speed and f-stops in low light conditions. I do it all the time, trying to get 'Natural Lighting Shots" and find I can't go below 1/30th at f-1.8 (oly4040). and even that gets a little blurry... so the camera, Sony is a good one, up there with the best of that category, is trying to get the best shot it can under minimal conditions. Sort of like shooting "Without Flash" at dusk. It drops the f-stop as low as it can.. 1.8 or 2.0 or whatever and the only other adjustment is the speed... so if the speed was at 1/40th or below (slower) you'll get a blur...

So, IMNSHO, it's not the camera, Sony is good, it was the conditions in which you were shooting.
I shoot a 4mpix so it's not the mpix either... I think it was just the conditions that casued the blurring... or a focusing problem?? a little spec on the housing might make the auto focus hone in on that??? I've had that problem on a video housing.. speck of dust on the inside lens... auto focus kept trying to focus on that... depends upon how "Out of Focus it is"... but a blurr sounds more like the camera was trying to get the best shot it could under the conditions..

Don't believe the "quality Settings" would affect the outcome.. just more pix of a blurred image...

Hope that helps...

 

[Cecil]

Almost certainly motion blur. Look at the shots closely and try to determine if the camera missed the focus or movement caused the blurr. I had many problems early on with the Sony and motion. Two issues, the first is the slow shutter speed but the bigger issue is moving the camera as you shot. They are a very small camera and movement is all to easy.

I have also gone to a higher ASA (ie. 400) to get faster shutter speeds.

 

[alijtaylor]

Thanks to you both, I couldn't work out any reason why 4MP should gibe worse results than !MP so maybe I was just excusing some bad shots by what I had heard. I'll take it down again and try some more.
Alison

 

[fpoole]

Yeah, If you can shoot in a manual mode (don't know if it has one) then keep the speed 1/30th or faster 1/40 1/50th etc....

The photos might come out darker, but you can always "Lighten" them up in a photo editing program, You can't fix blurred photos... not easily that is..

You'll be surprised at what can be done to "Save a Photo" with the Photosoftware these days..

Hava good one eh?? ....

 

[Mark Goodchild]

I agree with what has been said. I've used a P9 and this is the most annoying aspect. The shutter speed on this camera is slooooowwwwwww. A friend of mine has a P100 and even that is much, much better.

I found myself taking lots of shots like the ones below on 4MP. Did not think to fiddle with the settings however. Must try that next time!

See the shots here:

http://www.zerovisibility.co.uk/Gallery/Egypt1/images/picture21.jpg

http://www.zerovisibility.co.uk/Gallery/Egypt1/images/picture42.jpg

Entire gallery http://www.zerovisibility.co.uk/Gallery/Egypt1/index.html.

 

[MacHeath]

Hi I am looking for suggestions on a problem I encountered with a Sony Cybershot 4.1. where taking advantage of 4 megapixels seemed to result in blurred shots

Due to my carelessness I had my Canon Powershot S50 stolen a day before a liveaboard trip. The only camera and housing I could find where I was, in the time available, was a Sony cybershot 4.1 with the Sony Housing. So I was not familiar with it underwater. A few other folk had them on the same trip though and they advised me to shoot on low megapixels or I would get blurred images. I was shooting mainly on auto without strobe in about 15 - 25m visibility. Mainly silhouette type stuff - but even a silouette of a hammerhead or a whale shark is worth having!

The first few dives I followed their advice and was happy with the sharpness so I thought I would try the full 4 megapixels. We were shooting moving stuff, mainly sharks, and I was very unhappy with the extent to which the images were blurred. For the rest of the trip I switched back to 1MP.

On return I made an enquiry from a camera shop and was told something pretty uninformative like 'it happens with some makes - they trade off things against each other'.. I subsequently found a replacement Canon and have not had the Sony underwater again, although I am very happy with it on the surface.

I am however looking to understand what happened and wondering if there is something I could do differently to avoid it. The Sony has limited ability to manually set aperture and shutter speed but it does have a little. Unfortunately I cannot post any of the images or give details of the apertures and shutter speeds as the CDs I had downloaded 90% of my shots to were also stolen!
Any suggestions.

Alison

A 4MP camera has twice the number of pixels in each direction as a 1MP camera.
All things being equal (sensor size, lens field of view, shutter speed etc), this means that the 4MP camera will be twice as sensitive to camera motion during the time the shutter is open as the 1MP camera. By this I mean that looking at a picture on a pixel scale, you would see the blur over twice as many pixels as with the 1MP camera.

In my experience (4MP sony), photos are rarely sharp on the pixel scale, the main reason being how difficult it is to hold the camera still whilst shooting.

Another thing to consider it that a 4MP camera has much less area per pixel that is sensitive to light. This can often result in a longer exposure than with a 1MP camera, making the 4MP camera even more sensitive.