I get poor quality photos from my canon sx 40.

[MT2]

I have an sx 40 12.1 mp that takes terrible photos compared to a 10 year old Olympus 3.4 MP that uses an XD card. Could the problem be with the sx40 SD card? I've tried a couple different, but not a high end card. Yet.

[Skirball]

No, the SD card has nothing to do with the image quality.  What is wrong with the images, anything specific?  What shooting modes are you using?  There's a bit of a learning curve with all cameras, it takes some time to figure them out so they don't always out perform our old cameras at first.

And I would certainly expect the newer camera to be more capable than the old Olympus, certainly with new features and stuff, and most likely it will have a larger dynamic range and obviously more resolution.  However, it doesn't mean the Olympus can't take great photos, in certain conditions - just as good as a modern day high res camera.  If you're blowing up prints you'll notice a big difference between the 3.4 MP and 12.1 MP sensors, but when just viewing on a computer monitor there won't necessarily be much of a difference.  It depends on what kind of photography you're doing, but if you're shooting with plenty of light (Sun) and not enlarging the pictures then 3.4 MP is fully capable of producing great pictures.  I know, I know, we're not supposed to talk about that, it's all about cramming more and more pixels on sensors, and buying the most expensive camera we can...

[MT2]

I'm taking just normal photos, some inside, some in bright sunlight, some in darker situations. It just seems the pix are not sharp, kinda fuzzy. It's not a shaky hand fuzzy, but the pix can be compared to a disposable camera quality. I'm not an expert, but have done enough to have some basics, and can't seem to improve the images. Pretty disappointed.

[Skirball]

If you're getting fuzzy shots in bright daylight then something is wrong.  Is there a specific subject in the photo or just a general landscape?  Dark situations is a different ballgame, but any camera should be able to produce a sharp photo in bright daylight.

Edit:  I just noticed that this is one of those 35X zoom cameras.  You are not going to get sharp photos photos at full zoom, especially if you're using the added digital zoom (don't, turn it off).  These little point and shoots will never match the IQ of the giant, expensive zooms people use on dSLRs.  Additionally, the longer the zoom the faster shutter speed you will need to get sharp photos.  That rule goes for all cameras.

[hsbn]

posting some sample shot will help.

[tnicoson]

It sounds like you may be getting out of focus shots.  Are you pressing the shutter button half way and allowing the lense to come to focus before pressing the shutter button all the way and taking the shot ?  The focus frame in the center of the display should be green.  If it is white or yellow, the lense has not achieved focus.  The long zoom cameras do tend to take a little longer to come to focus than the smaller lens cameras, especially at the longer zoom settings and/or lower light conditions.  If the center of the display is magnified and there is an "MF" toward the upper right of the display, then the camera is on manual focus and is not focusing automatically at all.  I doubt very much that this is your problem as it resets to auto-focus when the camera is powered off and back on.

Another possibility, especially if you are running the camera on full AUTO, is that the camera is running the ISO way up to offset low light conditions or camera motion.  This can result in noisy (grainy) pictures.  Set the camera on Program (P) mode instead of AUTO and set the ISO to 200.  See if that improves things.  In (P) mode, everything else will still be done automatically.  It just allows you to set the ISO.  With your older camera, even in full AUTO, the ISO would still have been fixed or limited, but with the newer cameras in full AUTO, you turn ISO, which can go as high as 3200, over to the camera.  This is a recipe for pure disaster.   You can go to higher ISO settings for certain conditions, but for anything over 400, you run the risk of noise in the darker areas of the image.  Also make sure you have Image Stabilization turned on and the camera set to save images to the largest, highest quality file size.

I have three long-zoom point-and-shoots (26X, 35X [SX40], 50X) and I get consistently acceptable images from all of them, even at full zoom (with tripod or monopod).  You should be able to as well.  As Skirball points out, they certainly will not do the job of a $1500 lens, or even a $500 lens, but we should be able to expect some level of acceptable performance - at least for on screen images and up to 4 X 6 prints.  It sounds like you are not even getting that, so good luck.  Keep us posted.

Regards,

Ted

[MT2]

Thanks for the tips. I had all the above except the ISO setting. I did adjust that, but it seemed there was no appreciable difference. Maybe I just got spoiled on my Olympus and had my sights set too high. The photos are OK, but with all we're told, I thought they would be great.

[tnicoson]

But . . . if your 10 year old Olympus takes noticeabley better photos than your SX40, there is definitely something wrong.  Is there any chance you could return the SX40 ?

[MT2]

Unfortunately.....I've had it awhile or it would go straight back. I'd been using some other cameras, and thought maybe the intial shots weren't that great because of settings, and put it aside. Lesson learned. It's really not fuzzy shots I suppose, it's more of a lack of sharpness, clear details along edges. The pix are about equivalent to a pocket sized Nikon I have, but not what I was hoping for.