I have been experienceing some image quality problems with my digital camera lately , it is a cannon powershot S3IS. ( http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/co...&modelid=13077)

When i first got it back in may , the picture quality was out standing , i have tried to use it a few times lately , and it does not seem to want to auto focus , like it is supposed to, ususally if i wait long enough , it will focus , but when i press the shutter button , it goes back out of focus , sometimes it takes several tries before i can get a somewhat focused picture.

Here are a couple examples:
Before:



And now , a picture i took tonight actually:



I have the extended warranty on this thing for a couple more years , but is this a setting that i have somehow changed , or is there actually something wrong with the camera?

 

I can't help you with the camera question, but good lord, I didn't know how much I missed scenes like that combine picture. Kinda hard to compare that to the MF510 I ran a few years ago.

Thanks for the home reminder.

Ed

 

I am in the fifth combine , the farmer we were cutting for hired a plane to take pictures for us , so i sent my camera up. That was taken about 15 mins north east of syracuse Kansas.

I will try and upload some more pictures soon if i get time , i cut 9000 Acres myself this summer, so i have lots of pictures.

 

That would be great! Looking forward to it.

I take it you may not want to recommend that particular camera? I'm thinking about getting a digital.

Ed

 

Actually , I LOVE the camera , up until now , and it is very affordable for the features it has, it was brand new on the market when i got it, so maybe there were some problems with early ones that just have not gotten ironed out yet. If I can't get the issue resolved by my DTR friends , then i will make the trek into the city where i bought it , and see about getting some warranty work done.

 

I bought the same camera for my wife 2 weeks ago. Maybe it is something in the image stabilization. I hope we don't have the same problem later. Good luck!

 

I have tried all the different settings for IS , but no luck yet...

 

Looks like the resolution or auto focus is off. Try resetting it to factory defaults. Should have how to in the manual.

 

There is one other funky thing it is doing with picture quality , in some pictures , it almost appears that there is dust or snow or something in the picture , i have cleaned the lense to eternity with proper lense cleaning tools , and no luck, once in a while it will still take a perfectly focused crisp picture , but not very often.

Here is an example of the other quality problem:



You can see that the image is also a little grainy , almost like it was taken with a much lower resolution camera.

 

Good call on the extended warranty, it sounds like its time to trade it in for a newer model.

 

It's like this because it has to compensate for the lower light level. Try taking some pictures during the day and see if it still does it. in order for the autofocus to work when it's dark out it should have a bright light that illuminates when you half-shutter to focus, right? Well if the subjects that you're shooting are too far away, it can't work, therefore making your autofocus useless. The grainy look is from it automatically raising the ISO level (the digital equivelant of film speed) to try to compensate for the low light level. Also, when taking photos in low light levels, the camera has to keep the shutter open longer than normal, and unless you use a tripod or have a VERY steady hand, it will come out blurry. In dim situations, try taking the pictures closer to your subjects, or somehow get more light there. The camera doesn't sound or look like it's broken, this is pretty normal with point-and-shoot digital cameras. Oh yeah, the image stabilization makes the shutter speed slower as well, so that's not helping at all when taking pictures in the dark. Let me know what happens when you take pictures during the day.

 

Thanks for the help desertram , but this is something new , this camera used to take perfect pictures EVERY time , night , day , doesn't matter, I put up night time pictures , because those were the mose recent i had taken.

Here are more examples.] These pictures were taken over a month or so , many of them on the same days , some are perfect , some are not, Alot of the pictures are of moving equipment , and taken from a moving piece of equipment , that i was driving. The problem has steadily gotten worse , to the point i can hardly take a picture now.

 

 

well, I'm scratching my head over this one, and all I can think of is call the canon service department and ask them. They can probably listen to what the symptoms are and recommend if you should send it in.

 

I will give that a try , but if anyone has some thoughts in the meantime , i would lobe to hear them.

Thanks.