Canon SD400 blues

[HorseShoe]

Hey guys, I bought a Canon SD400 digital camera about a week ago, and frankly I thought I was getting a good deal for it, but after trying it out for a week I find that the pictures are extremely grany and washed out with not much detail, also a lot of the time if you don't hold the camera perfectly still the picture that you take will be a bit blurry from the shaking of your hands. I tried setting the shutter speed to the max but that still didn't solve the problem.

Now do any of you guys own this camera and how good are the picures? Because when I read the reviews for this camera it was highly rated.

I was thinking of going and returning this back to Futureshop with their 15 days return policy and I was thinking of getting another camera at around the $500-550can price range and 5.0 megapixels. If any of you guys have a suggestion for a better camera please tell me.

Ps.
I want the camera to be able to take good sharp photos of really close objects. And come with its own rechargeable battery.

 

[imported_whatever]

Setting a faster shutter speed will make the camera go to a higher ISO rating, and therefore get grainier pictures. If you can hold it steady, you can get much better pics with it at low ISO.

 

[pm]

All very small cameras (either digital or film) suffer from a small flash and a tiny lens that doesn't let much light in. When you are talking about something the size of the SD400, you are stuck with these limitations. If the lighting level is poor, they keep the shutter open longer (resulting in blurry shots if you move while the shutter is capturing), and there is more noise due to the relatively low photon levels.

I presume these pictures were taken indoors? Indoors, try and turn up the ambient light. Don't use the zoom (that just makes the tiny lens problem even worse). Make sure to always use the flash. Put the camera on a solid surface or brace yourself against something. The outdoor daytime shots should be pretty nice. If not, then there's something wrong with your camera.

If you want something that takes better indoor shots, you'll need to move to a larger camera. Something with a much bigger lens and a brighter flash.

I have the Canon S500 and I've been pleased with it. If we want to take nice indoor shots, we switch to my wife's SLR.

 

[HorseShoe]

Well the pics that I took that were outdoor were really grainy, and I have played around with the shutter speed but still no go . And its too much of a hasle to be switching cameras around all the time, I just want a regular all arounder camera, I have seen some of my friends camera and they take some very nice picture.

I was actually thinking of just returning this camera and getting a Sony one.
http://canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=006153&cid=DC.831

 

[H2Opolodude]

i have a nikcon coolpix 5900 great camera great pics

 

[HorseShoe]

bump

 

[Slogun]

What resolution are your pictures set on?

I bought my wife an SD400 for mother's day and loved it so much I immediately sold my Canon S30 and S500 and bought one for myself.

Here is a random INDOOR shot I took last night.
The setting is Fine and Large.
Looks fine to me:
birthday cake

Save it to your desktop as a bitmap and magnify it with windows viewer, looks quite detailed to my eyes.

If your camera can't do that maybe it's defective as someone said.

One of the features I particularly like about this camera is the excellent closeup pictures it takes in macro mode (the above pic was not macro).

Here's a macro mode shot of my S500.