What is the best 4-5MP portable?

[Dee]

Scott, you can see in the photo where your flash covered looks good, but as it dwindles away the flourescent lighting effect start showing. Now you know why all women know not to apply make-up under flour. lights!

You get around it by using the setting on your camera. I don't know anything about the C-50 or it's settings. You'll have to look in the manual and find the section on adjusting the color balance or lighting balance. In alot of cameras is as easy as choosing incadescent it flourescent settings.

 

[SM Diver]

Thanks, guys. I found those settings and I am going to play with it and see if it improves the quality of the images.

 

[raxafarian]

Dee once bubbled...
Scott, you can see in the photo where your flash covered looks good, but as it dwindles away the flourescent lighting effect start showing. Now you know why all women know not to apply make-up under flour. lights!

You get around it by using the setting on your camera. I don't know anything about the C-50 or it's settings. You'll have to look in the manual and find the section on adjusting the color balance or lighting balance. In alot of cameras is as easy as choosing incadescent it flourescent settings.

The lights in the 2nd pic appear to be sodium lights.... the incandescent and flourescent settings probably won't look right.... but maybe one setting will be better than the others... I can take a grey card into any lighting situation and take a picture of it, and it'll balance for whatever the lighting is.... don't know if your camera has that feature.

Scott... there are 2 ways to deal with lighting causing color shifts.... adjust the camera for the lighting, or use MORE strobe power/multiple strobes.

Take some outdoor pics where you don't have to worry about what the lights are doing, and see how they come out.

 

[SM Diver]

Rexfarian,

OK, followed instructions and went outside and took a photo of my pool. It's dusk here, but still plenty of light for the shot to be properly exposed. Here is the image: http://www.npr-florida.com/pool.jpg

Again, though, way off color. Way too much blue in that photo. Also, to me, the shot looks under exposed. All the shots last night look under exposed as well.

Hmmmm, I'm going to go take a shot now with my Olympus 2.5, it's quite a bit darker outside, and I bet you the shot comes out better.

 

[raxafarian]

what was your white balance set to for the pool pic??? If auto, try and manual set it to "daylight" or "overcast". Other than that... don't know what to tell you.

 

[SM Diver]

Well, thanks for trying to help. Yes, I had it set manually for overcast, at least if that's what the cloud icon is for.

As suspected, my little 3 year old 2.5 Olympus took a better shot: http://www.npr-florida.com/poolw2.5.jpg

Both the Olympus and Canon are going back, and I'll just hang on to my old clunker. Only problem is, can't take it underwater. The search continues ...

 

[Finesse]

But it looks like you may have a better lens on the older camera....as it seems to be collecting more ambient light ....hence the desired level of brightness......

Like the others have said .....some of those shots were in some pretty challenging lighting conditions........and especially if using an auto setting or program for aperture and shutter speed, the camera tries its best to compensate for lighting conditions.....aka the shot of the Family and that neat little craft in the background
That camera undoubtedly shut down the lens so the white hull didn’t totally wash the picture out when the flash went off....but the down side is the underexposure in the background ...like Rax said the strobe would help fill in alot (well not the background in the Family shot).. otherwise some cameras have "brighter" lens which help pull ambient light into the picture .....much like the pool shot....
Messing around with manual settings(aperture and shutter) can help get that desired level of lighting also......but that takes some time and practice...
Good luck with the camera hunt!!!

 

[kdietz]

I would say that shooting in any automatic mode with that much bright packground light will yield washed out color..............these cameras aren't magic

Try going manual and expose for the background and let the strobe try to get all the foreground

Side by side comparisons would be a fairer way to rate performance..........not critiquing individual shots in difficult lighting conditions

IMHO

 

[Big-t-2538]

Just bough a canon power shot s40. He nor I am a big camera buff, but the pics he has taken are sharp. There's one loaded in this post, and it's a landscape shot on a pretty cloudy day. I know that this was taken on the default settings, but there are a ton of features in this camera. They are features way over either of our heads, but you might want to take a look at this camera. Also, there's an u/w case available for this camera which I'm sure you're interested in too.

 

[SM Diver]

Thanks. I'll take a look at that model.

I think all of the points about the lighting are accurate, but the point about the lens is the core of the issue. These little feature packed 5mp camera are very compact, but those little lenses the telescope in and out can't get the job done indoors. My older camera has a much bigger stationary lens, thus the better photos. For indoor shots, I would venture a guess that I would need additional strobes or other lighting to take good shots. Still, for those of you who have not yet seen the mpeg or quicktime features, it is very cool.