Avoiding Grainy Photos

I have the Minolta Maxxum STsi, which is a 35mm SLR. Attached are the pictures that I took with this camera. They have a little bit of grain. How can I avoid taking grainy pictures? I used ISO 200.

Um, that camera is at least 17 years old. That sensor is probably, at best, 4MP. (I'm not going to take the time to track down the details.) I stopped shooting when the images from my 4MP Pany Lumix became intolerable for exactly this reason.

Old tech, noisy (by definition), long since bypassed by modern products. Those images look just like what I'd expect from a body that old. I don't see how they're going to get any better, although Lightroom could possibly help (if that camera can even shoot RAW).

Time for new hardware. Things have progressed greatly since then.

garyrhook wrote: Um, that camera is at least 17 years old. That sensor is probably, at best, 4MP. (I'm not going to take the time to track down the details.) I stopped shooting when the images from my 4MP Pany Lumix became intolerable for exactly this reason.

Old tech, noisy (by definition), long since bypassed by modern products. Those images look just like what I'd expect from a body that old. I don't see how they're going to get any better, although Lightroom could possibly help (if that camera can even shoot RAW).

Time for new hardware. Things have progressed greatly since then.

Thank you for the feedback. I'll get a new camera.

I believe this is a film camera....is it not?

If so, I never had that kind of grain when shooting film, especially at an ISO of 200. Was this particular roll of film very old? Have you tried others and, if so, do they all show this kind of graininess? 

I might try another roll of fresh film before I went out and bought a new camera. That is...if...you really want to shoot film. Which, personally, I wouldn't go back to for anything.

Otherwise, I would replace it with a more modern technology digital camera.

Bryston3bsst wrote: I believe this is a film camera....is it not?

That was unclear when I read the info at Amazon, but there is discussion of the sensor size. I drew a conclusion. And now, doing more research, I see the same model (by name) for sale on eBay as a film camera.

Now I'm confused.

If it is film, then I take back what I said, but the OP doesn't talk about film, developing, and scanning. I took a guess at digital imagery.

I'm not that familiar with Minolta (and think maybe they used the Maxxum name for various cameras) and thought too that the OP was asking about having a digital camera set at 200 ISO. Which to me didn't make sense that photos would be that noisy usually.

To me the first one looks like it might have been hazy off in the distance; I don't really see grain in the second one (at least not on here on my monitor).

I shoot film and many people use 200 ISO film as an all purpose daylight film. I prefer 100 ISO outdoors on nice sunny days, and go with 400 speed film indoors, or outdoors on cloudy/overcast days (depending on the weather and if it's fairly dark and gloomy or not so much). I used to get a good bit of grain sometimes on higher speed films at 800 or 1000 ISO but maybe there's a reason those aren't made anymore - I liked 400 speed much better.

I would suggest too that you might try different film if you try this camera again, and check your settings - make sure you've set the camera's ISO to 200 or whatever box speed the film is that you're using. Meter the scene and learn to get proper exposures. A lab should be able to make adjustments in developing color film so there's some latitude shooting it. I send out film and it's possible to request the film be pushed or pulled (which I rarely do) but you could look up what's involved in that.

With B&W film I find particularly it helps to get a proper exposure to get negatives that aren't too thin (and barely usable) or too dense (which can be usable but involve zapping a lot of light thru them and not what I want to spend time doing!).

If you try some fresh film and shoot another roll, try taking notes and jot down what you did and how you set the camera and see what worked or what didn't.

The camera stated is a film camera. There is a lot more to this than the question asked. Either the camera model is stated incorrectly or the questions of film type, film scanner used, etc. needs to be answered. The answer to the question asked has little to do with the camera itself.

Bryston3bsst wrote: I believe this is a film camera....is it not?

If so, I never had that kind of grain when shooting film, especially at an ISO of 200. Was this particular roll of film very old? Have you tried others and, if so, do they all show this kind of graininess? 

I might try another roll of fresh film before I went out and bought a new camera. That is...if...you really want to shoot film. Which, personally, I wouldn't go back to for anything.

Otherwise, I would replace it with a more modern technology digital camera.

Yes, I'm talking about a 35mm film camera. I used a new roll of film. Before taking those pictures, I was able to take pictures without any of the grain with the same camera.

garyrhook wrote:

Bryston3bsst wrote: I believe this is a film camera....is it not?

That was unclear when I read the info at Amazon, but there is discussion of the sensor size. I drew a conclusion. And now, doing more research, I see the same model (by name) for sale on eBay as a film camera.

Now I'm confused.

If it is film, then I take back what I said, but the OP doesn't talk about film, developing, and scanning. I took a guess at digital imagery.

I was talking about a film camera. The pictures were converted to digital. Even the printed pictures were a little grainy.

icepics wrote: I'm not that familiar with Minolta (and think maybe they used the Maxxum name for various cameras) and thought too that the OP was asking about having a digital camera set at 200 ISO. Which to me didn't make sense that photos would be that noisy usually.

To me the first one looks like it might have been hazy off in the distance; I don't really see grain in the second one (at least not on here on my monitor).

I shoot film and many people use 200 ISO film as an all purpose daylight film. I prefer 100 ISO outdoors on nice sunny days, and go with 400 speed film indoors, or outdoors on cloudy/overcast days (depending on the weather and if it's fairly dark and gloomy or not so much). I used to get a good bit of grain sometimes on higher speed films at 800 or 1000 ISO but maybe there's a reason those aren't made anymore - I liked 400 speed much better.

I would suggest too that you might try different film if you try this camera again, and check your settings - make sure you've set the camera's ISO to 200 or whatever box speed the film is that you're using. Meter the scene and learn to get proper exposures. A lab should be able to make adjustments in developing color film so there's some latitude shooting it. I send out film and it's possible to request the film be pushed or pulled (which I rarely do) but you could look up what's involved in that.

With B&W film I find particularly it helps to get a proper exposure to get negatives that aren't too thin (and barely usable) or too dense (which can be usable but involve zapping a lot of light thru them and not what I want to spend time doing!).

If you try some fresh film and shoot another roll, try taking notes and jot down what you did and how you set the camera and see what worked or what didn't.

I'm used to seeing pictures with a higher resolution so I thought they looked a little grainy to me.

Thank you for the suggestions. I'll try them out.

My mistake.

As for grain, you don't indicate what kind of film, nor film speed, you were using/used. Higher ISO means more grain. I remember that even 400 ISO color film (40 years ago) had noticeable grain, so the answer is kinda "it depends", right?

You say you used ISO 200 but is that what the film was rated at. The ISO needs to match the speed of the film. It's not an arbitrary number. If the film was 200 speed, then what was the resolution of the scan? A lot more information is needed to determine the issue with the grain. No one can guess the reason without full disclosure of the details. The information is more critical with film, than digital.

garyrhook wrote: My mistake.

As for grain, you don't indicate what kind of film, nor film speed, you were using/used. Higher ISO means more grain. I remember that even 400 ISO color film (40 years ago) had noticeable grain, so the answer is kinda "it depends", right?

I used Fuji 35mm film and I used the 200 film speed.

Shadowfixer1 wrote: You say you used ISO 200 but is that what the film was rated at. The ISO needs to match the speed of the film. It's not an arbitrary number. If the film was 200 speed, then what was the resolution of the scan? A lot more information is needed to determine the issue with the grain. No one can guess the reason without full disclosure of the details. The information is more critical with film, than digital.

I used a film speed of 200. Before the prints were converted to digital pictures, I saw that the prints were a little grainy.

ISO 200 film should show some grain but not much.  I suspect the images were underexposed and gained some digital noise when they were scanned and digitized.  That is a guess.  I haven't seen the negatives.