I've been doing photography for a while now but I need your help...?

[traciilyn♥]

Like the above statement says I've been into photography for a while now but I'm having a little issue when I upload my pictures onto my computer. I have the Rebel Xti from Canon, and while I must say I love my camera dearly I can't seem to get the results I'm looking for. When I take my pictures they come out perfect on the LCD screen however when I upload and open them in Picasa/Photoshop they become much more blurry and it greatly reduces the quality of my images.I'd love to know why this is, and if you can help me fix it. I can't figure out if it is the actual size setting I take the pictures on or what. Please help! I really appreciate it.

 

[Michael]

What mode are you taking your pictures in, and to what quality is your picture quality set?

It could very well be that your camera is set to a lower resolution making the image appear great in smaller form but as it gets larger the image quality deteriorates in relation to the size at which it is viewed.

++++++++++++++++++++

Had to go get my Canon...

If you go into the menu and go to quality, you should see several choices small, medium, large. You really should see possibly 2 of each one has what looks like "stairs" and the other looks like the top left quadrant of a circle. I forget what "stairs" looking one is but the one that looks like a quarter of a circle is "fine" I keep my camera set to Large "fine" for the automatic modes, and then RAW for the manual modes. This ensures it is always set to the highest resolution.

 

[curious]

An important thing to keep in mind is that you're only seeing a tiny image (likely only up to 3") on the display on your camera. You can't possibly tell on that small image how sharp a picture is. Not to mention that your computer monitor isn't completely sharp either.

If you're getting a lot of blurry pics it can be a number of things for you to troubleshoot:
1- Do you have image stabilization & is it turned on?
2- Are you using a slow shutter speed and no tripod?
3- The smaller the processor and size of megapixels, coupled with shooting in JPEG, coupled with editing takes away critical info your camera stores relating to your pictures and reduces their quality.

If your camera allows you to shoot in RAW you can try that to see if it helps keep critical picture details (but once you shoot in RAW you'll have to process every picture - you won't just see the pics in a straightforward way like in JPEG). If you save in TIFF you'll experiencet less compression and info loss too. RAW will be more time consuming in post-processing than JPEG. Your Canon DPP software that came with your camera has the tools to process RAW. Then if you want to ice the cake (so to speak) you can export your processed RAW pics to PhotoShop for more tweaking.

 

[FotoZ 4 FX]

JPEG.

That's the problem. Shoot either RAW or TIFF. JPEG is a lossy compression.

Also, loving your equipment doesn't make you a better photographer,... knowing the limitations of it will though.

Hand-holding a camera at a shutter speed of 1/60th is careless since your heart is most likely to beat at least once during that exposure and, if you are using a longer lens, it gets worse... your shutter speed must AT LEAST match the focal length of the lens... a 300mm needs at least a 1/300th second exposure if you hand hold.

Hope this helps improve your photography. It's most often the operator and not the equipment.
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