I'm at my witts end, and my wifes about to divorce me over this camera. I've had friends show me pics taken with $3-400 cameras over the holidays and they look awsome, inside shots at parties at night, Xmass morning, the shots are clear as can be, no blur, no grain. I have a $1300 camera, and even invested in the SB 600 flash, and 99% of the pics we take inside are crap, blury, yellow cast, dark & grainy. Now I know people will say that this is a high end camera and I have to experiment "Off Auto" But give me a break, if a $300 camera can take flawless pics on Auto, why can;t a $1300 do the same??? My wife is so disgusted she won;t even touch the camera and wants to "Go to Costco to buy something cheap so we can get some good pictures before our kids grow up and move out"

I simply can't beleive I need to adjust a bunch of settings, and use a tripod just to snap a quick pic of my 2 year old doing something spur of the moment inside our house. It seems outragous to me that this camera can't take a decent, and I mean even usable picture inside on auto so my wife can use it to take pictures of our kids.

I went from a Kodak DC290 that would take awsome, clear pictures even if I was running down the street with it, no blur, no dark & grainy, just clear crisp pics. Then we moved up to the Dimage 7i, frankly it wasn;t bad, but I swear the old Kodak took better pics, now I have the D70, and it takes the worst pics of all three, I give up.

Has your D70 got one of those automatic motor-driven focusing lenses? I think it's just something to do with the setup. The D70 is a semi-pro camera, so it's necessary to read up on the instructions in order to use it properly, just like any other camera.

I forgot to say .. in capable hands, or should I say, knowledgeable hands, the D70 should be able to obtain much better quality photos than cheap cameras...or at least equal to the good looking pictures that the cheaper cameras take. If your D70 has one of those camera lenses that move around by itself via a computer controlled motor for auto-focusing, then you should be able to focus and get real sharp photos. Have you used a SLR film camera before?

It may even be possible that your camera could be faulty.

This has actually been covered is a few other threads, the P&S cameras do a lot of the sharpening and image cleanup internally for you, presenting you with a finished image.

The DSLR's do not by default, they sort of expect you to do the final image processing. The DSLR's also have a IR cut filter(not removable) that makes the image look soft until it has been run througha bit of unsharping. You can usually go in and change the internal processing settings to increase sharpening if you really want to.

I'm not a Nikon DSLR user, so I am not sure whereit would beset in a Nikon.


Peter.

Wow....it's a good thing the Capt. seems to have gone as the D70 is perfect, according to him !

I'd have to admit that my Coolpix 8800 is not the best at "snapshot" indoor photography. My Kodak 3MP takes better indoor photos. And I agree that you would expect good results on full "auto".

My own conclusion is that my Coolpix, and your D70 may be better suited to outdoor photography. My wife will never spend the time to learn all the functions on my 8800 and is quite happy with the Kodak for her shots. She really appreciates my 8800 shots for the clarity and colour, but we both prefer the easiness and reliability of the Kodak for indoors. This is an unscientific rationale,but I really think that at this time,a serious digital photographer would benefit from a high end camera for serious stuff and a pocketable point and shoot for snapshots or times when carrying the Big Gun is awkward.

So there's an excuse to buy yet another camera ! My wife will shake her head if she reads this.

Steve..who would also like a D70 !

It seems like you may have inadvertently change a setting or two on the D70, such as the White Balance and/or the ISO. As an 8800 user I'm not familiar with the D70, but it may have a choice in the Menu for resetting the camera to it's defaults. Try that.

Otherwise, you may have just gotten a defective D70.

Walter

Upalms wrote: Well, we wouldn't want that to happen (kids grow up and move out before you get any good pictures). :lol:

Your post sounds like many other posts, from users of many other cameras. Usually, it's something relatively simple that they are doing wrong.

Yellow cast is usually due to a white balance problem -- normally from incandescent light light exposure. Blurry is from shutter speeds being too slow. Grainy is from ISO speeds too high and/or underexposed areas.

A dumb question: Are you using the SB600 when you're taking these photos? Is your camera in full auto when you take them? In most indoor lighting conditions, shutter speed isn't as critical. This is because the flash burst itself has the impact of freezing the action (because the flash burst is very short, and the subject is usually not exposed well enough by light other than the flash burst).

But, if you've got too much ambient light, sometimes you can get some exposure from ambient light -- causing some of the problems you're mentioning.

I would typically expect to see these types of problems if you're trying to do something different than the autoexposure would normally do, causing the ambient light to contribute too much to the exposure.

I'd suggest posting a sample or two of your problem photos (preferrably without the EXIF information stripped out). Or better yet, since you've got your own web site, just a link to an unmodifed, straight from the camera image. That way, forum members could look at your camera settings to try and see what is going wrong.

Grainy: What ISO Setting. If you have ISO 1600 set, you will get grainy (noisy is the actual term here). The camera default is Auto ISO and it WILL set 1600 in low light.

Yellow: White Balance not set for your incandescent lights, hence the yellow. If you are not in Auto White Balance nor incandescent, try the latter.

Blurry: Could be several things. Improper camera holding (Camera Shake) or long exposure in low light (not using flash?)

Dark: EV set too low. Nikon sets their cameras conservative on exposure to ensure that highlights don't get blown out. Set +1.0 EV and see if that doesn't give proper exposure.

Before my camera shop let me have the camera, they set it up for me so these things would not bite me in the backside. In AUTO, the camera will do some strange things, especially in low light. You can turn auto ISO off, which may very well fix your noise problem. If the light is very low, it may not meter well for the white balance, so you will need to choose incandescent. Blurry you will probably have to figure out on your own. The "kit" lens is a great lens, but it's neither the sharpest nor the fastest lens in the Nikkor line. For candid shooting indoors, you may want to pick up a fast wide angle or normal lense. My second lens is the AF 50mm f1.8 D. It's very fast and VERY sharp (and very inexpensive). I believe there's an f2.0 35mm, but that might be getting into some money.

All the above said, the following is definitely key. You MUST read and understand and apply the information in the user manual. Cultivate a relationship with the guy at your camera shop. You didn't go cheap and buy it on the internet did you? The guy at the camera shop is worth at least several hundred dollars in long term advice, but you have to support him by purchasing from him.

Cheers,

Eric

Please don't take this the wrong way but it sounds like this just isn't the right cam for you. I have the D70 and my wife has a Panasonic FZ15. I swear that her point and shoot pics look much much better than mine. However, when I use the D70 for planned shots (mostly landscapes and macro stuff) my pics blow hers away because I took my time to painstakingly maximize all the setting to produce the best possible capture. So the bottom line for me is I try to use the right cam for the right situation. Off course I have met some photographers who can get great shots no matter what they use.

Hope this helps,

Mark

D70, with 50mm1.4, set on 125 shutter, F5.6. Custom incandesent WB setting. iso 1600, with a little noise relief. I dont see all the problems with adjusting the camera as necessary, just like any other high-end camera, unless you expect a P&S type camera