I'm about to cry. Or scream. Or BOTH. HELP!

[ARose4me7305]

Ok, so I'm almost 8 months pregnant (hence the thread title, partially). I don't want to take my big DSLR to the hospital when I give birth, so I pulled out my P&S for the 1st time in over a year today.

It's a Canon SX110is and it really is a fantastic camera. I've taken some amazing shots with it. Well today I decided to grab the tripod and capture some indoor belly/maternity shots of myself just to play around and try and re-familiarize myself with the camera.

ALL of my indoor shots came out extremely noisy/grainy. I've attatched a picture taken straight from the camera with no editing done. I'm so disappointed and want to figure this thing out so I can capture some good shots of my newborn in the hospital in a few weeks.

Any help or suggestions?! Feel free to make adjustments and tell me what you did to fix it. No matter how I photoshop these, they still look horrendous. Not to mention this is the first time I've ever attempted to take a photo of myself lol.

[ishootRAW]

1: congrats.

2: what where the settings?

P&S's small sensors don't like High ISO's. And dark areas.

Looking at the shot (mind you on my itouch) the noise does noy look all that bad. I think you may just be used to the better low-light quality of your DSLR.

Edit:
Quote from specs list.

Optical Sensor Size: 1/2.3"

That plus a ISO range of up to 1600, = lots of noise.

[gturner]

sometimes you just hit the limit of the equipment and this is one of these cases.

flash is the only solution if you are going to use it for baby snaps in hospital.

[G'Hopper]

You will need to give us the exif data to see what went wrong. However, it seems as if your ISO is a bit high - and it's not necessary as the highlights on your belly is blown out.

However, using what we have, I would suggest that you turn creative with this one and go a bit "arty". I turned it b/w with Gorman-Holbert's technique, tweaked it a bit and cloned out the white bit on the door behind you. I also straightened it by 1º
You can get the Photoshop action here:
Black and White Conversion Actions


So by the way, you look beautiful
but for the hospital ... take your big gun. You're only going to have this baby once.

P.S. I've opened a Webshots account to upload this image for you and it now shows that it's copyrighted to me. Sorry, I don't know how to change that and if someone can help me, I'd be most grateful

[mshockley]

I also agree with above that the shot isn't really that noisy, and I find it to be very well composed and quite nice!

Having just been in hospital with my sister who had her baby last week, I can say it was nice to have the "big guns" with me. I had my 85mm f/1.8 lens on camera and could stay well out of notice and got some great shots without flash. But I did also have my little point and shoot, and took some on my blackberry to send to family members quick.

Of course all this said, I wasn't the one having the baby this time! Can you give a close family member a quick tutorial of your camera??? Maybe you set it up with a nice well rounded Auto setting and let them fire away?

Best of Luck!

[mosgood]

Hi ARose4me,

Congrats on your baby. Your photo isn't too bad really. Other than maybe your camera is having some trouble with low light. Can you boost the ISO to about 400? Maybe it won't be quite as grainy. If not, try boosting the lighting. Window light makes for really nice soft portraits. :-) You want it coming from the side though, no light shining direct on your subject (it'll blow out highlights).

Good luck!

[mosgood]

If you need another manual for your camera, try this website:

Canon Digital Camera Manual - Manuals and free Canon Digital Camera instructions | ManualsOnline.com

I found a pdf copy of my Canon SX100is & the best thing is that it's free! I tried to figure out the ISO settings without it, but no luck.

[spookie]

Originally Posted by mshockley

I also agree with above that the shot isn't really that noisy, and I find it to be very well composed and quite nice!

Having just been in hospital with my sister who had her baby last week, I can say it was nice to have the "big guns" with me. I had my 85mm f/1.8 lens on camera and could stay well out of notice and got some great shots without flash. But I did also have my little point and shoot, and took some on my blackberry to send to family members quick.

Of course all this said, I wasn't the one having the baby this time! Can you give a close family member a quick tutorial of your camera??? Maybe you set it up with a nice well rounded Auto setting and let them fire away?

Best of Luck!

This is what I thinking also. I did this at our last family reunion and actually got some nice shots from it, some were a little flashy, off center, but most cleaned up nicely. Congrats, and whatever you do, enjoy the miracle Tell the photographer take alot of them, then that increases you're keeper count.

[SwissJon]

The ISO looks rather high. The photo is over exposed on your belly, (I'd suggest the light source was too harsh.

Your camera appears to be shooting at 5MPix.

So I'd suggest you check your settings, check you don't have Auto ISO switched on, check that the camera is at its maximum resolution, and try to make sure that the extremes of light and dark are a little more gentle, then realise that your P&S won't ever be able to take the same quality photos as your DSLR given the same circumstances (If they could, we wouldn't be spending ridiculous money on the DSLR!)

Then... Hand the camera to someone else and get them to familiarise themselves with it.. You're unlikely to be in the mood to take photos for a few hours or days, so relax and let someone else take the stress..

Congratulations by the way!

[faeriegodess612]

Or,.. you could look into hospital newborn photographers. Like this.

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