Camera Disappointment

[MoodsR4Cattle]

I bought a used Kodak Easy Share P880 for my daughter and I'm really disappointed with it. I read review after review that praised the camera's usability, numerous options, and its high quality photos. I read through the manual, but started taking test shots with the previous owners settings. When those photos ended up grainy and blocky, I reset the camera and started from scratch. No matter what I did, the photos weren't the crisp, clear images I was expecting. Before you ask, I had the camera set to 8.0 mp, and took photos with a tripod under many different light conditions, with and without flash - and tried saving the images in .tiff, high .jpg, and .raw formats, and still the photos at 100% were grainy/blocky.

Am I expecting too much of this camera, did I make a bad choice or can someone offer suggestions to remedy this problem?

Many thanks!

[tamlin]

Hi Moods, sorry to hear about your camera disappointment. I have no experience myself with that particular make of camera, but all the user reviews at the following site seem to be positive: Kodak EasyShare P880 review rating

Looking at the technical specs, I'd say you should be able to get good sharp photos with this camera - bearing in mind the fact that pretty much all digital images need some degree of sharpening at some point (either in the camera or post-processing on the computer). Here are a few things that may affect image quality:

• Poor lens quality (although since this camera has a fixed lens, I don't really see that as being the cause)
• Dirty CCD sensor (although again I think this is unlikely with a fixed-lens camera)
• Faulty CCD sensor (well, it's possible with a used camera - have you seen any photos taken by the previous owner?)
• ISO setting too high (this could lead to excessively grainy images, although if you've reset it to the factory defaults the ISO setting should be around 100 or 200 I'm guessing)

Of course, it may just be that your expectations are higher than whatever the camera can deliver. Any chance of posting some unprocessed samples?

[MoodsR4Cattle]

Hey Tamlin,

That was one of the sites I read before I bought it. Many reviews stated the same kind of thing, so I was quite sure I was getting a quality camera.

The original owner left some of his photos on the camera that were very good, very clear, very clean. I would post some unprocessed photos I took, but I deleted them. I'll have to borrow the camera from my daughter and take a couple more.

I am comparing photos from this Kodak camera to my old Epson photo PC 850Z which is only 2.1 mp and takes very good photos (saw the same Epson camera - with no bids - for .99¢ on Ebay today).
I have high expectations, but I don't think they're unrealistic.

I suspect that you are right about the ISO setting. It's stock setting is 400.

[tamlin]

ISO 400 seems a little high to be the standard setting - I would definitely try experimenting with a lower setting.
Another thing that occurred to me was that you might be getting some digital noise in the pictures, which could make them look grainy. Does your camera have any kind of noise reduction settings? (As you can tell I'm grasping at straws here...)

[supertackyman]

im betting that you ruled out something stupid like low res with mass interpolation to bump up the numbers. so im at a loss. sorry its not working out for you.

[notjustgraphics]

Hey Moods

If you could post one of the images from the camera we can all see what your are trying to describe... poor image quality as Tamlin has suggested can be caused by lens, sensor, compression or special effect issues...

The EXIF info in the image should tell us what your camera settings were when the image was taken which will lead us to better suggestions.

One thing i'v experienced with the Kodak P&S Cameras is a relatively low effective flash range... so, if you're shooting indoors where light is deceivingly low and the flash is firing, your subject may be just outside of it's effective range...

Try taking an outdoor shot of something with vivid colors during full daylight... this should give you a better example of the cameras capabailities... unfortunately, that can be difficult this time of year

Mike.

[luckypictures]

Can you post some of the images here for us to see. We might be able to better diagnose the problem if we can see what you're talking about as far as the blockiness goes.

[MoodsR4Cattle]

Unfortunately, before I could get a photo taken, my daughter moved and took the camera with her (It's her camera). I'll have to wait till she sends me some photos.