N95 camera is poor quality

Question

Hi all
I've just recently downloaded new software onto my N95 and have discovered that the camera quality is no where near as good as the previous software.
Has anyone else noticed this.
My pictures before i did the download were superb quality, but now i get a fuzzy or blurred pictures and they are really poor.
Thank you
Daz

Answer 1

24-Apr-2008 03:12 PM
deadman2444 wrote:
Ok grschinon if i want to take a good picture,what things to keep in mind
Errm.. OK. Thing is, I'm not a photographer either but I do know more or less how to use a digital camera. I also worked for 5 years in a professional photographic lab so I guess that helps a little.
The biggest problem with photos is the lighting and sometimes misuse of the flash.
If you're photographing someone's portrait but there's a window behind them, then all you're going to see is a lovely photo of the window with a person-shaped black splodge in the middle of it. Why? Because the camera accounts for the bright light of the window, considers that the global scene is bright and consequently lowers exposure, thus blacking out the actual subject of the photo. Solution? Photograph the person elsewhere or, if that's not possible, force the flash to go off. This will have the effect of lighting the subject and balancing out the brightness level in the composition.
Conversely, if you're outside, for example, and the lighting isn't too good, only use the flash as a last resort. Why? Because it isn't powerful enough to illuminate your whole back yard, the camera knows it let off the flash and compensates for it, and you end up with a black photo with a few red eyes dotted around it. Solution? Turn the flash off altogether, set the camera to night mode and, optionally, adjust the exposure manually up an f-stop or two (yes, you can do this on the N95's camera).
Avoid using the flash on close-ups and prefer natural light. Why? Because the flash light is too intense and it'll drown out any detail of the subject of the photo, particularly if its surface is reflective.
Also bear in mind that you can adjust the sensitivity of the camera, just like you'd put 50 or 100 ISO or 1600 ISO film in a traditional camera. Lower sensitivity means it can deal with much more light coming in, so it's great for sunny scenes out side, while higher sensitivity means that it knows it has to work with less light so it's suited ideally to evenings and indoor shots in poor lighting conditions. High sensitivity is also good for taking blur-free shots of objects in motion in good lighting conditions because the camera, which is extremely sensitive on this setting, compensates for the large amounts of light by shortening the exposure time.
Colour balance is another problem. You may not know it because your brain compensates for it automatically, but neon lighting is green and regular incandescent light is yellow. This affects the colour of objects photographed quite dramatically to the point where you can even buy special reversal film from professionnal labs that has a blue mask on it to compensate for the yellowness of a tungsten flash. One of the functions of a digital camera is the "white balance" function whereby you point the camera at an object which is white even if the lighting makes it look different, and the camera then adjusts the photos taken according to what the white object actually looked like.
Those are the main points I can think of right now. Others should feel free to add to this thread if they have more suggestions.
Message Edited by grschinon on 24-Apr-2008 03:44 PM
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