Samsung digital s73 camera
Hi, there are many reasons why a camera may produce less then sharp pictures.
1) Dirty, oily or damaged lens: Check for dust and fingerprints.
Clean lenses with extreme caution, using dry lens paper.
Use only minimal pressure and gently wipe from the center
outwards, NEVER in circles.
If the lens is really dirty, ask a professional photo dealer to
clean it for you as a free courtesy.
2) Check to see if the auto-focus is working correctly, this could
be an electronic or mechanical problem requiring servicing.
Focus the camera on sharp image at various distances,
to see if it responds by moving the lens.
3) Can you focus the camera manually?
4) Can you focus by moving the camera back and forth
in regards to the object of interest?
5) Is the auto-focus feature somehow disabled in the menus ?
6) Are the batteries up to snuff, they may be strong enough to
turn on the camera, but too weak to move the focus motor.
7) Is the subject you are trying to focus on out of the
focus range of the lens: i.e. too close ?
8) Is the subject you are focusing on too bland, with insufficient
detail to activate and lock the auto-focus.
9) Do you have enough light for the auto-focus to operate.
10) Does the flash unit project an red pattern to help with
focusing.
11) Are you mistaking sharpness (focus) for depth of field.
In low light conditions, the lens iris opens wide, just
like your eye, to let more light in.
This results in a loss of focussed depth of field. This
means that focusing becomes much more sensitive
and critical, such that (when) the main subject is in focus,
everything behind and in front of the subject is not.
This is a theoretical limitation of all optical lenses:
The greater the focal length and the greater the aperture,
the shorter the depth of field.
This can actually be very beneficial when shooting a
portrait: Focus on the eyebrows, blur the background,
or it can be very detrimental: When trying to magnify
a butterfly on a tulip in low light conditions, getting
everything in focus is impossible.
12) Are you mistaking motion blur with lack of focus,
due to slow shutter speeds.
13) Are you shooting in very low light conditions,
causing the picture to become more noisy,
due to the way the digital camera sensor works.
14) I you come up empty on all these suggestions,
you probably have a defective camera and it is
warranty time:
a) Defective electronics
b) Defective auto-focus mechanism
c) Defective lens, loose internal elements
d) Detached sensor chip
.... etc
Try to isolate the problem. Try to manually and
automatically focus on a wide range of subjects,
at various distances, in bright daylight conditions.
If you are still unable to focus the camera,
it is probably defective and requires replacement
or servicing
BTW
Quick review of the internet, indicates that
this particular model is notorious for high battery drain
and battery connection problems. This may be the cause
of poor auto focus as indicated above.
Also this camera has insufficient internal memory, and
and an add-on memory card is required. It is possible
that without the memory card, the camera is defaulting
to a very low pixel resolution, in order to save memory
space, thus creating the appearance of poor focus.
The nominal resolution of the camera = 7.2 Mega Pixels
is respectable for such a low cost camera, but the
reliability reviews are not good.
Martin
