Strange pixel effect on all photos

[DistantMelody]

Hello everyone

I have a Sony SLT-A77V camera. I nearly always use a tripod and a remote control for added steadiness. I have a polarizer for the nice deep blue sky effect. I can always see a pixel effect on my photos. Here is one as an example:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=648980398470611&l=90284b1105

Close up:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=648981998470451&l=df5f54c211

It is rather upsetting when I do my best and get these results. What could be the reason?

I wanted to go into Stock photography but it turns out they are quite particular about this sort of thing and my images wouldn't be acceptable due to the pixel effect.

Please help me to fix this problem.

DistantMelody

[Bieomax]

Thank you posting the images on here. I'll apologise now for my line of questioning as i dont know your history with photography and how much you know or dont know (i dont profess to be a pro as i only started a couple of years ago and have had no formal training rather then reading the t'interweb and being a member of www.dyxum.com which has helped me progress and understand more of my photography)

Steady shot wise I'd say do some test shots with and without steadyshot on when mounted to a tripod, as if its a good stable platform and you've no wind then some people think that the stabilisation should be turned off as the camera could be trying to correct something that isn't there. This will effect sharpness more rather then noise.

what sort of settings are you shooting on (Auto/P/A/S/M)? as the iso will have a large impact on the noise within the picture and if the camera is making the exposure calculation for you like in Auto

Also what image type are you saving as, when shooting? Jpeg or Raw ? and are you doing any postprocessing once you have it off your camera?. As jpeg can carry more noise then raw as its having the camera do your noise reduction and then the compression of the image where as the Raw is the full fat version of the picture which also gives you more leeway when processing

There is a nice article Here which may help if you currently don't do any post processing to reduce noise.

[DistantMelody]

Thank you Bieomax

I didn't know about Dyxum. The language in the article is impressive. It's very professional. I didn't know about layering.

I have tried different settings. I usually use A or S setting. I don't know what ISO is. I have looked and it is set to auto. What is the correct setting?

I save the images as JPEG so that if I need to I can edit them later. If I use RAW the images don't open in other programs and I can't edit them. I use APE and Inkscape for editting my photos. Is there a way that I could use RAW and be able to open the photographs in those programs?

I am only starting. I always used to use the auto settings on compact cameras but now that I have all this cool gear (alpha camera, polarizing filter, extra lenses, tripod, remote control...) I want to do it right.

I will go and experiment as soon as I am able to get out of the city.

DistantMelody

[Bieomax]

okey dokey, this maybe a longish one.

Shooting modes & ISO

when you take a picture (also called an exposure) it is mainly a balance of three things, Aperture/Shutter speed and ISO.

Aperture controls how much light is coming through the lens to capture medium (digital sensor/Film) it also effects your depth of field.

Shutterspeed effects how long the light will be on the capture medium (and value selected will effect your picture if any of the subject is in motion, so the faster the shutter speed the more it will freeze movement in the shot)

ISO is the sensitivity of the capture medium to light, ISO (or Asa) was a term for film which transfers nicely to digital also, as with film it indicated how sensitive to light that roll of film was, where as with digital you dont need to change your film to change the sensitivity the camera basically ramps up the voltage in the sensor to make it more sensitive to light. As with film and digital the higher the ISO number the more grain/noise you will see in a picture.

so when you take a picture in Auto the camera is looking at the scene you have pointed it at and is adjusting the 3 above values (Aperture/Shutter Speed/ISO) to create on average a picture with the correct exposure for the light you have available.

So when your shooting in either A (aperture) or S (shutterspeed) you are making one of the decisions on the 3 parts so the camera will adjust the other parts (in A and S you can actually take one more dicision away from the camera and select the iso rating you want to use - i think the a77's lowest is 100 which will give you the cleanst picture from the camera)

In M (manual) mode you control all 3 of the items above, so it gives you more direct control of how you expose your picture.

for completeness you also have P which is program, and as far as i understand the camera will do your calculation of the above 3 items, but in P you can adjust any of the 3 items if you want to tweak the camera's decision.

Picture formats & Software 

Jpeg and Raw, is like having semi skimmed milk (jpeg) or full fat milk (raw). Raw will pretty much have all the values of information in that the camera saw while taking your picture, Jpeg is what i think they call a lossy compression format which pretty much cuts information down in the picture to the basics to save on file space.

Sony do provide a Raw converter (Sony Image Converter) on the disc if you have it if not

available on their site Here and you can open the raw files and tweak them and save them as a different file format (i've not used it in years so cant fully recall how it works) to allow you to edit else where.

I'm not sure on APE or Inkscape (inkscape seems to be more geared towards vector graphics rather then photo editing) but it maybe worth looking into something like Adobe Lightroom which has an adobe raw converter built in and if you use it right it'll help you catalogue/store your images. i think its about £80 ish for lightroom, but maybe download a trial from the website and see if you get on with it, there are other similar photo editing suites out there so have a search and play about with them.

if you need a little more powerful image editor in general but dont want to pay for it, Adobe have released their Photoshop Cs2 for free while i dont think the raw editor will open your newer files it may help compliment if you decided to use Lightroom (Photoshop is aimed more at editing all images, lightroom is aimed more at photographers and its tool set is aligned to that)

Layering is just a feature in some image editors like photoshop, where in if your saving in the photoshop file format (.psd) it'll allow you to store different effects/parts of an image on a different layer, you can also turn on and off different layers when you want, its just a handy feature.

Anyone else reading this please feel free to jump in and correct me or explain things a little better

Kind Regards

Mark.

[DistantMelody]

Thank you Mark for explaining everything in such detail.

I will try keeping the ISO always on 100 and see what happens.

I didn't use the program on the disk because it kept importing the same photographs again and again each time that I inserted the card into the card reader. I don't want to empty the cards. I have had a computer break in the past and lost all of the images that were on it.

I did not understand. If I get the RAW to JPEG converter won't it still be the same thing? If the grains appear from the format itself. I use Inkscape for adding watermarks to images and Adobe Photoshop Elements for correcting them. I have never been able to make the layers work. They only appear one at a time. I would probably be able to use Adobe for watermarks if I could make it work. Inkscape is more for diagramming. It crashes when having to deal with large photographs. Should I use RAW anyway?

At the moment the grainy pattern problem is the only problem I have. If I could just get rid of this (forever) I would feel much more relaxed.

DistantMelody

[Bieomax]

Sorry didn't realise the ape was photoshop elements, which version is it? As I'd see about updating it as you should be able to open raw files in that (elements also comes with Adobe camera raw), which would make it easier.

Quite often photo software jpeg generation is better then the in camera one, play with a raw file with similar settings to one of your jpegs and when you save it as a jpeg pick the highest quality ( think It's 12 in photoshop)

Then have a look at the noise at 100% and see what the results are like, then go back to the raw and have a look at applying some noise reduction and seeing how that looks like then outputted to jpeg.

Maybe have a Google for photo noise reduction and the versions of elements you have, if I get some time I'll see if I can find anything good.

Mark.

[DistantMelody]

Hello Mark

I have Photoshop Elemets 10. This is a screenshot of the error message I get when trying to open a photo that I took using ARW format. Does it mean I need to get a newer version of APE?

I always save in the highest quality but the problem is there before I edit the image. I don't have a problem with computer memory. There is enough to fit everything. I don't mind how heavy the file is.

[DistantMelody]

I'm sorry, that turned out rather small. Here is a cropped version.

[Bieomax]

Just looked on adobe there is a camera raw update for elements 10 which adds the a77 camera raw compatibility, the update is 6.5 from what I can see.

On the 'help' menu in elements is there a check for updates option? Or is there a an Adobe updater in the Adobe folder when you go on the windows start bar and then all programs?

If none of them maybe Google elements 10 camera raw update and look for the link which takes you to adobe.

Mark

[DistantMelody]

Thank you Mark. Updating from the help menu worked and the image can open now.

I will experiment.

[DistantMelody]

Hello Mark

I took some photographs today with the settings you recommended (RAW, ISO 100 and no steady-shot). They still have the grainy effect (photo 1). I tried bluring the image but that removes detail (photo 2). I tried the image averaging using 5 photos but that somehow still has the grainy effect (photo 3). Will I ever get away from this curse? 😞 Is there anything else I could try?

Original image

Original image close up 100%

Blurred image

Blurred image close up 100%

Averaged image

Averaged image close up 100%

For some reason averaging the image took me 2 hours. I could open all 5 files together but they refused to appear together as layers (in the bar on the right). Each one was like a seperate document and each was labbeled as 'background'. I tried everything. Eventually I had to select each photo using the selection tool, copy each photo and insert it as a layer in one of the documents. Surely this is not the way they intended? It is far too inefficient. What is the proper way? I am still not satisfied with the result. It doesn't look professional. 😞 I took more photos today, this one was just the one I used as an example. The effect is on each photo. 😞

Thank you for all the advice.

P.S. Forgot to say. Inkscape is really for vector graphics. It could do this easily but the files are too large and it crashes. It is much easier to work with layers in Inkscape. I can just import the photos, align them and select the opacity. Is it not like that in Adobe Photoshop? What did I do wrong?