Does most digital camera's image quality suffer in lower light situations?

[backpackerx]

I have a point and shoot 3.2 Mp Canon A70. I'm very pleased with the normal lighting pictures but anything outside at night with the flash seems to come out a little grainy. Not too bad but grainy enough to tell it from a film camera. I know this isn't a super nice camera or anything but is that fairly normal?

Thanks

[Suhit Gupta]

I think there might be two or three issues here at work, and together they are giving you the bad result you notice.

Firstly, you have a 3MP camera. This means ~ 3 million pixels. Typically, film is rated at somewhere between 14 and 18 megapixels. Secondly, since there is enough light available during the day, the pictures look ok, but at night I am guessing that you are using flash. Thus the graininess is exaggerated due to the lesser amount of light. (I don't know whether I am explaining myself clearly here or not).

Related to my second point, as far as I know the A70, you can't adjust the shutter speed. But if you can, then try leaving it open longer, that might make a difference. Also, try the presets on the camera that move it into "night mode". That /might/ help a bit too.

Lastly, the graininess in the Canon A70 (though it is a solid camera) may just be due to its optics and the CCD. Of course I am guessing to some extent here since I haven't really seen the exact output of your camera. But I can see how you might find a difference between pictures.

Suhit

[Suhit Gupta]

Hey,
I just did some searches on google for user reviews and have found that a few people have pointed out problems with the A70 and night photos. However, most of them mention that their results were much better when they switched the camera to night mode. Perhaps that will work for you. Good luck!

Suhit

[backpackerx]

Thanks for the info. I can set the shutter and aperature manually. I'm also going to try the night mode and setting the ISO to different settings.

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Is it at auto ISO? If it is, set it to the lowest (ISO 50) setting. Also to me it could be a case of shadow noise produced by DAC. However it shouldn't be too noticeable if that's the case.

Post a crop of a sample photo to let us see, that'll be easier to point out what went wrong.

[backpackerx]

yeah, I'll try the ISO 50 setting. I'm assuming that this should be good for low light shots as long as there is no movement correct. I know if I shoot with ISO 64 film I need a lot of light of or no movement for the slow shutter speeds.

[Janak Parekh]

I know this isn't a super nice camera or anything but is that fairly normal?
It is, especially as you go towards the cheaper units. As far as I know, the CCDs are very sensitive, and noise rapidly enters the picture with longer exposures, yet the exposure time must be lengthened without sufficient lighting. My tiny Exilim S2 has horrible noise at night. The high-end units, on the other hand, can go for long exposures without introducing noise.

However, as Suhit pointed out, there are probably tweaks you can do to minimize the effect.

--janak