Pentax W20 users - indoor flash ?

Fishing A Learning Experience, Pass it On.
1

I have a W20 like a lot of folks here. It does great outdoors. It’s the indoor flash pictures that I think should be better. Any tips on camera settings you use for indoor shots? It’s like there is “grain” in the photos. . . . .

-wayne

2

waynep,

I don’t own or have ever used a Pentax Optio, but the grain you are getting is probably due to the auto feature adjusting the ISO upward to compensate for lighting and the preprogrammed flash setting. If you can, change the setting to a fixed ISO (the lower the ISO the better) and use the flash compensation feature if it has one. Small p/s camera use a smaller sensor. Smaller sensors produce noise more so than larger sensors. Most p/s are optimized at the lowest ISO setting. The higher the ISO setting the more your picture begins to degrade.

3

Heck, call and ask them. (800) 877-0155 :slight_smile:

4

I have an Optio W20. My favorite trick is to tell people, “oh, my lens is dirty” and dunk it in the river or under the faucet. <grin>

It’s your ISO setting for sure. The Optio has a setting for the RANGE of ISO that it will try and use. If you go above about ISO400, you’ll get grainy pictures. So try setting it so the maximum ISO it will use is 400, and see if that helps. The flash on the camera is tiny, so it’s going to a high ISO to try and expose more of the room.

DANBOB

5

OK, I did a little experiment. I manually set the ISO and took a picture at each ISO from 64 to 800. The 64 ISO is very nice quality. The 800 has a lot of noise. I can bet the 1600 would be worse. So for indoor flash pictures I am going to have to use a lower ISO.

danbob: That’s almost exactly how I was introduced to the W10/W20. I was playing in a scramble golf tournament. There were a lot of consumer vendors in this event. I ran into the Pentax Sales Rep who was using one. Someone asked him about his camera and during the conversation he tossed it into the cooler of beer (ice water), took it out and took some pictures. I immediately put one on my “have to have” list. I can’t count the number of disposable cameras I dunked on fishing outings.

-wayne