New camera help a6100

[BobbyGibson96]

Just bought my girlfriend a new a6100 with lens kit. We are both new to camera photography. And we take pictures of our dogs when we go hiking. And we are experiencing a lot of graininess and distortion in our photos we have it set on Manuel mode with 1600 iso and a high capture rate. We really don’t know what we are doing so any help would be awesome 

 

here is a link to the picture 

https://ibb.co/qghgLQq

[cmycycle]

For APS-C sensors, noise starts to get noticeable when you're at ISO 1000 or above.  Though if you're viewing the image on a 14" laptop or a cellphone, you usually don't notice the noise unless you zoom in 100%.

To lower your ISO value and maintain proper exposure, you'll have to drop your shutter speed and open your aperture to compensate.  Just Google "exposure triangle" and experiment.

Also, don't sweat it if your picture has some noise in it due to your ISO setting.  It's not the end of the world, and if you're happy with what you captured in your picture, then that's what matters.

[BobbyGibson96]

We really just see the noise when we are zoomed in to the photo 

I don’t know if you checked the link but that was without an edit on it’s pretty noisy an that’s only zoomed in a little bit. But my girlfriend shoots for perfection and won’t settle for any less but she gets mad bc she don’t know how to adjust anything. 
 

is there any tips or good videos to watch ?

thanks,

bobby

 

[Pieter]

If you shoot for perfection, set the ISO lower. Try to stay below 800, but 100 if you want perfection. If you're getting motion blur due to too slow shutter speed, buy a faster lens. Don't expect that perfection comes cheap. Also, learning the basics of digital photography will get you a long way towards perfection. Sounds like auto-mode will yield better results at your level of knowledge than manual mode. Don't let your ignorance be the reason for frustration about the resulting images.

[cmycycle]

Sounds like you and your girlfriend are pretty frustrated with the results from your A6100.  Keep this in mind: Progress, not Perfection.  No photographer claims their picture is perfect, and pretty much every photography I've listened to as talk about the "journey" of photography.

Down to the nitty-gritty of getting that noise out of your photo:

ISO in film land is about how sensitive to light the film material is.  Now throw that concept out, because it doesn't apply to digital photography.  The sensitivity of the image sensor in your camera never changes.  ISO in digital land is how much digital gain you add to your picture to compensate for low exposure/low light.  High Gain (High ISO) = High Noise.  The ISO setting on your A6100 (or any digital camera for that matter) that has the least gain is ISO 100.

Setting your camera to ISO 100 is really easy: On the D-pad on the back of your camera, press the side that says "ISO" to bring up the ISO settings menu.  It's by default set to AUTO.  On this menu you can set the range for ISO or manually select the ISO yourself.

Now this is where the "Exposure Triangle" I suggested you Google comes up: With a lower ISO of 100,  you'll have to let more light into your camera to properly exposure your picture.  You do this by slowing your shutter speed and opening your aperture (F-stop).  But nothing comes from free: low shutter speed means that your image could be blurry if you subject moves or your hands shake.  Wide aperture will get you background blur (bokeh), which you may want if you want to isolate your subject, but you're not going to want if you want everything in your picture to be in focus.

Most of the time I keep my A6400 on Aperture Priority ("A" on the top dial).  That means that the camera selects the appropriate shutter speed and ISO for the aperture I selected.  You should also set the lower limit of your shutter speed (on the menu it's "ISO AUTO Min. SS").  Start with a lower value, like 1/100 sec.  From there, like I said before, experiment, figure out what works.  You'll find out that there are situations where you have to bump up your ISO because of lighting conditions.

[Thad E Ginathom]

23 hours ago, BobbyGibson96 said:

And we take pictures of our dogs when we go hiking. And we are experiencing a lot of graininess and distortion in our photos we have it set on Manuel mode with 1600 iso and a high capture rate

Yes, that picture looks unacceptable. For proper assessment, though, you need to upload the original image file, not a screenshot from a phone.

You are out and about in daylight? You should be going for a much lower ISO.

If you need high shutter speeds (hint: unless your subject is moving, you don't) then you probably want a much "faster" (larger aperture) lens. I was initially very disappointed with the kit lens that came with my a6000. Now I know that I'd much rather walk around with my Sigma 30/1.4 on the camera than the 16-50 zoom of the kit lens. You'll get a new sort of discipline from the prime (fixed-focal-length) lens photography too.

At first, "real-camera" photography can seem a lot harder than simply pointing the phone at something. I certainly had that experience three years ago. Persevere! You'll enjoy.

Shooting for perfection... You need to practise for perfection. Maybe for ever! But you also need kit that will be kind to you. Your camera will have as much potential as you can fulfil and much more. That lens... Maybe not. I could have taken a nice, cleaner, picture of your dog, indoors with just dim artificial light. It would stand cropping into the face like that too.

Here's a couple more things to experiment with.... 1, try popping up the flash! Just to see. 2. Try your camera's auto mode: Sometimes it may get stuff way wrong, sometimes it might show you what the camera can do.

23 hours ago, BobbyGibson96 said:

a high capture rate

??? What, continuous shooting? Don't. 

Fine, when you are ready to take mid-air-leap portraits of that dog. Until then, concentrate on getting single frames that you like

 

[BobbyGibson96]

We typically go around the am times and around late afternoon early evening 

and it’s a lot to handle when we are just starting out but we will definitely be trying out what you said 

also is there a lens you suggest we normal do scenery and our animals. We typically shoot any where from 2 feet away all the way to 15 feet away. And we shoot and edit in raw format 

https://i.ibb.co/gzg1wbC/4-FA6-D259-3741-4857-BFF6-E91-A82-FCF47-A.jpg

and see if that’s any better quality 

thanks,

bobby

[cmycycle]

For lenses, since you have the 16-50 kit lens, stick with that for a while and see which focal lengths you tend to prefer.  For landscapes and pet portraits you can use any focal length on the kit lens for those shots, just depends on what kind of look you want.

Just keep in mind the 1.5 crop factor for APS-C sensors.  As an example, a 50mm lens on an APS-C sensor gives you a 75mm field-of-view (50mm x 1.5).

[BobbyGibson96]

I honestly don’t know what any of that means cycle lol 

im pretty green about cameras and lens 

is there anyway you could dumb that down to my level ?

 

[Pieter]

4 hours ago, cmycycle said:

Just keep in mind the 1.5 crop factor for APS-C sensors.  As an example, a 50mm lens on an APS-C sensor gives you a 75mm field-of-view (50mm x 1.5).

No no no! Don't bother any new photographer with something as confusing as equivalent focal length! @BobbyGibson96 has an APS-C camera. All he's ever used is an APS-C camera. Why in the world would he be interested in knowing fullframe equivalent focal length? All he cares about is what a lens looks like on his camera.

@BobbyGibson96 just forget all that. You have a 16-50 mm lens. Use it for a while, determine which focal length you like best and maybe someday buy a nice prime lens (= not a zoom lens) at that focal length. Primes generally let in much more light than zoom lenses, allowing faster shutter speeds in dim lighting conditions. Please don't bother yourself with crop factor for now as it has no practical meaning for you.

[Thad E Ginathom]

18 hours ago, BobbyGibson96 said:

and see if that’s any better quality 

I'd be happy to have taken that picture. It's very nice, and if this is where you are starting, things can only get better :)

[Lostluckyone]

I have this camera myself.  That is a nice shot of your dog. This is a really good camera despite what you may hear or read. All you need to do is lower your ISO and try your best to keep it under 800 AND raise your shutter speed to make it faster.  I noticed in the beginning I had shots just like this and was about to return the camera from pure frustration, THEN I looked at my image details and my camera had set the ISO to 2000! some of them were even at 6400! I know this post is kind of old. I do hope you didn't give up on the camera. I will post a couple of images to show you what I was getting to what I get now. If you zoom in you can see how blurry the parrots eyes and feathers are. The photo of my dog, I had learned to use proper settings in manual and you can zoom in 100% and see the detail. The very first pictures I took were just like your dog, I deleted all of those out of frustration lol.

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[BobbyGibson96]

2 hours ago, Lostluckyone said:

I have this camera myself.  That is a nice shot of your dog. This is a really good camera despite what you may hear or read. All you need to do is lower your ISO and try your best to keep it under 800 AND raise your shutter speed to make it faster.  I noticed in the beginning I had shots just like this and was about to return the camera from pure frustration, THEN I looked at my image details and my camera had set the ISO to 2000! some of them were even at 6400! I know this post is kind of old. I do hope you didn't give up on the camera. I will post a couple of images to show you what I was getting to what I get now. If you zoom in you can see how blurry the parrots eyes and feathers are. The photo of my dog, I had learned to use proper settings in manual and you can zoom in 100% and see the detail. The very first pictures I took were just like your dog, I deleted all of those out of frustration lol.

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Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

I still have the camera I ended up getting a new 16-50mm lens prime lens and the quality is way better lol. I ended up turning my iso down to like 250 or 300 and my shutter speed around 200 something