Optical problems.

[narrell]

shaking and grinding noise stop after the power is on. Will do the tests and then make a decision. (due to bad weather, this may take a week or two).

[deef]

Hi Narrell. The examples you put up are very overexposed which makes me wonder if there is a setting on the camera which is increasing the exposure by 2 stops. I am not familiar with your model camera so can't offer guidance as to where to look.

I wonder about this setting because I downloaded 2 of your pics and processed them in Lightroom. The processing consisted of reducing the exposure value by 2, recovery 30, blacks 20, clarity 74, vibrance and saturation 26, sharpening 107. So a minutes work produces a result which shows that there is plenty of quality info in the file to get a reasonable result. This leads me to think that the camera settings are a bit out of whack.

Hope that helps you searching for the answer.

[martycon]

Now here is a good practical suggestion

[bitsnpieces]

The first image with the flowers may have just been exposure problems, but the second one definitely has blur, thus we want to test whether it's user or camera

If it's user, then that's easy, some tips, advice, done deal.

If it's camera, then we'll know what to do next.

Reason why we can also presume it's camera is based on the information provided, this was never a problem beforehand, but now is. Hopefully we'll get some test results back soon

[narrell]

Well, The decision has been made, I decided to purchase a new Sony a65, and so far I am pleased with the results, though lots more practice is needed. These photos were both taken by me, late this afternoon, with a light drizzle happening. Both hand held. I definitely prefer the a65 shot for a first attempt. I'm pretty sure at least some of the problems I was having, if not all were due to the age of my a700. I have no idea how to get the Exif INFO to show, so if anyone could steer me in the right direction were there is instructions to do that, I would be very pleased.
Photo taken with Sony a700

Photo Taken with Sony a65

[bitsnpieces]

Hi narell,

I'm presuming settings on both cameras were the same right?
Did you get a chance to test at different shutter speeds or such?
If so, I would have to say, the a700 definitely hit its age and could use some repairs, ie. I'm pretty sure that isn't camera shake problems from that image.

Anyways, great to see another Sony a65 user - though I personally would love an a77, but for the budget, the a65 is a great camera.

Regarding EXIF data, are you using Photoshop? If so, are you saving for web or saving normally?
Saving normally should keep the EXIF data.
If you're saving for Web, then on the right side of the Save for Web box, you'll see metadata - change that to All.

If you're doing that already, or saving as JPEG already, then it could be that Photobucket strips that data away, so you'll need to manually tell us the settings you use.

You can do that by right clicking the file, Properties, Details tab, and that'll list all the basic stuff like shutter speed, ISO, aperture, etc. I hear some people say sometimes it's not completely accurate - nonetheless, it helps.

[arthurking83]

I'm going to stick my neck out here and say that the A700 image is completely affected by camera shake.
And that the A65 image is not.

exif is intact.

A65 image is ISO 1600 and 1/160s .. whereas the A700 image is ISO 400 and 1/5s.
There is a possibility of capturing an image at 18mm and 1/5s, but on inspection of the A700 image, this definitely wasn't optimum shooting settings.
End result is lots of camera shake.

Note that while the A65 image is sharper looking, it has lost a fair amount of detail at ISO1600 due to noise and noise reduction.

[bitsnpieces]

Hm... If that's the case, then yes, that would be camera shake, thus my question of whether they were shot the same way. Without being able to see the EXIF data myself... it's hard to say what the reason was...

Which brings the question, how come my EXIF Viewer doesn't work? It hardly ever displays anything... Only once did it display some data which I could not understand...

Bad JPEG file head, SOI marker not found: 0x3c 0x21
Status = -1

Unable to extract some or all of the EXIF data, which may have been removed from the image file.

I may need to reinstall it or something... -_-

[arthurking83]

Nah! my web based exif viewer didn't show any exif either, so it's a PB issue.
I downloaded the images from PB(which for some reason came in at full size, 12+Mb! )

most exif is contained within those files.

[narrell]

ok, now I am confused, the settings on both cameras were the same when I took the shots-ISO100 and 1/5s, so not sure how they ended up different. I'm using Photoshop and I save as normal jpegs..not web ready. I have been told PB does sometimes strip the exif data, so I guess I need to look for somewhere that doesn't. I'm off to take a few more test shots..this time with my tripod, so I can rule out the people shake..

[bitsnpieces]

That's interesting.

Try a faster shutter speed though if you're on a tripod, and turn off image stabiliser also.
Let the camera do it's own setting for ISO and aperture. We're not so much worried about image quality, just looking for shake and blurriness, and what could be causing it.

So if it's on tripod, turn off stabiliser, put a nice shutter speed of 1/50 at least I'd say, 1/100 if you can, and let it rip.

[Speedway]

There is 1 setting on the camera which is different on both cameras and that is the metering mode the A700 is set to spot and the A65 to multi segment this could account for the difference depending on where the spot metering is set. I use spot for most of my wildlife and sport photography but switch to a wider mode for landscapes etc. I also use single point focus switching that around to suit the situation and have occasionally taken a quick shot where the focus point was way off
Cheers
Keith.

[arthurking83]

Like Speedway said, the metering mode used had an influence.

A700 was indeed set to spot, and A65 set to pattern(or matrix, or overall) mode.
The metering mode has caused the difference in shutter.
Also, I can't see the Auto ISO bit setting set in the file's exif data, so I assume that ISO was manually set to 400.
A700 was set to Aperture priority.

Note that you had the A700 set to f/4.5(at 18mm) whereas you had the A65 set to f/4 at the same focal length. Was this the same lens or different for each camera?

With the A65, I also can't see any auto ISO setting made in camera, but the exposure mode used says it was "normal"(whatever that is) .. and this implies an auto exposure mode.
I'm guessing this is similar to a landscape or portrait type auto program mode, and so I assume the camera automatically switches to an auto ISO setting in this situation.

I remember a few consumer level cameras doing this, where when you set them to Landscape mode, it then sets ISO to 400 and you can't change it. It was very frustrating to try to figure out why.

Exif is set up almost OK the way you have it now and it is PB that is not allowing exif plugins to read the metadata. You have to download the image to see the data.
Note tho that while you can see some exif data, PS still strips a lot of the manufacturer specific data out.
This is probably why the ISO setting referring to Auto mode or manually set can't be seen.

One way to get around this if you're asked to upload an image with full exif is to use any software from your manufacturer to convert raw images to jpg, or alternatively shoot in jpg mode for the sample images and upload them as they are(not editing with PS!!).

So for a proper analysis of whether the A700 is OK or not, firstly set it up with the same settings as the A65, focus to the same point, set it to manual exposure mode as you should do with the A65 too.
My guess is that you won't find much difference other than any specific sensor advantages that the newer camera may have.
(ie. don't look at the two respective images at 100% as the A65 images will have more detail simply due to the greater pixel count of the sensor!)

[narrell]

Ok, I went off and took 2 more shots, one with each camera. Both set to Manual, with auto focus, f/4.5 (at 18mm), ISO manually set to 100. Same lens,same tripod and even the same pro duo memory card. Uploaded to Flikr, but I have no idea how to get them to show up here...any help on that would be appreciated. In the meantime I have posted them to PB. first is A700 second A65.

[bitsnpieces]

The images have been shrunken small that I can't really tell if there's anything wrong or not. Would you be able to post the original photos onto PB so we can see full size?

But judging by how it looks here, looks like the A700 is doing just fine.
Noticed you used 1/125, and a tripod too right?
So going by this, and what arthurking83 and deef said previously, I'm assuming the blurry images from the A700 could have simply been from camera shake due to slow/long shutter speeds (so make sure they stay quick/short) and overexposure (which can cause an illusion of blurriness as you don't get to see the finer details in the white mess).

Speedway mentioned that A700 uses Spot metering, is that the only metering it has? If so, just need to be careful when using that guy when you're in one of those semi-automated modes, like P, A, or S, as that metering can make exposure annoying to work with, or fun.

[Mary Anne]

I have been using PB for almost 10 years and not once has it stripped the exif data from any of my images.

The reason the exif data is not showing on some of your images would be because it has been stripped before you uploaded to PB.
As mentioned above some programs do that when you save for the web, not sure if your Adobe Photoshop Elements 12.0 does though.

If you dont have some kind of exif viewer to read the data on the posted image
Then left click on your image and under Media Info left click on Load more Hope this Helps.

I did notice you used the flash in both images, and are still using two different metering modes also.

[arthurking83]

Not that it's imperative, but this new set of images on PB seem to be of a smaller size.
if you uploaded them to PB at this smaller size, what I think may be happening is that if you upload to PB with a very large sized image, it may be doing some behind the scenes processing top display the image at a regular size(for most screens).
This could be removing the link to exif too.

On AP now with these images all three of my browser based exif viewers are seeing the exif data from those linked files.
A quick and handy one for Firefox is called Exify, which is an addon that pops up a translucent box containing minimal exif info as you hover over the image.
Handy for assessing stuff like this where you just quickly want to know what shutter speed, or whatever has been used.

So exif is now good(not that it's important but just a handy help tool to be aware of) and A700 looks fine.

Just one more question to Narell, did you crop or manipulate the last two images in any way?
The A65 image has a strange aspect ratio.
Not important, just curious.

- - - Updated - - -

.....

Speedway mentioned that A700 uses Spot metering, is that the only metering it has? If so, just need to be careful when using that guy when you're in one of those semi-automated modes, like P, A, or S, as that metering can make exposure annoying to work with, or fun.

Just had a quick look at the A700, and the metering mode selector is the ring around the AEL button.

[narrell]

Copies of the previous images before cropping.
Arthurking83....yes, I cropped the image to make them smaller,trying to not post such large images. Guess it doesn't help huh!






Sorry, forgot about the difference in metering modes..I will retake the shots tomorrow (afternoon)and then repost. But I think I will change the subject matter...I am starting to dislike this little tree very much.

[bitsnpieces]

Well, there's definitely nothing wrong with the a65 so no need to worry about testing that baby out.

This time, the a700 I'm guessing was out of focus. Everything's a blur but doesn't look like shake or movement, just out of focus.

What you could try doing is a nice close up of the tree since you don't like the view of it at the moment and how it sticks out. A nice close up is a fresh new perspective.
Just remember to change your settings accordingly so you can get a nice fast shutter speed of 1/50 minimum on a tripod.

[arthurking83]

.....

This time, the a700 I'm guessing was out of focus. Everything's a blur but doesn't look like shake or movement, just out of focus.

......

If you're referring to the full sized images bits, then be careful about what you're looking at.

The A700 image is still quite OK, but the focusing is different to the image shot with the A65.

This could be part of Narrell's issues.

The shot from the A700 has been focused much closer in, along the grass, where it meets the concrete, slap in the middle of the frame.
DOF isn't as infinite as some would have you believe so something has to give. Hence the tree in the middle of the yard is going to look less focused than with the A65 image.

The A65 image seems to have been focused on the tree .. so it will appear sharper.

Narrell, if you can can you shoot this scene again with both. But be sure to get both cameras to focus on the tree in the middle of the yard.

So make sure the AF point is set to the centre area, make sure AF mode is set to single shot mode, metering modes should both be the same(doesn't matter which mode)

PS is stripping some of the exif data that specifically relates to camera settings.
Shoot the images in jpg mode in camera, and do nothing in PP.. upload each directly from camera to PB.

There may be a possibility that the A700 is misfocusing, but to guess at this without the in camera settings info will be misleading.
The focusing settings in camera can impact on how the camera is focusing.