Images coming out really grainy

I have noticed this past two weeks my images are turning out real grainy. I tried to check my sensor but my nikon wont let me lock the mirror to look at the sensor. I really dont know what to do. My pictures use to come out great, nice clean and sharp. I dont know if there might be oil on my sensor or what Pleas help.

Hi Tiff, Welcome. Not knowing what gear you have makes it hard to help, but If I were to take a wild guess, I'd say your ISO is getting set way too high.

Post a picture. Why can't you lock up your mirror? Low battery will prevent access to the mirror lockup setting. A dirty sensor shouldn't make grainy pictures. What is your iso set at?

Welcome...

Grainy pics Mean high ISO or under exposed images....What ISO have you been shooting at...

If you post up an image for us to view we may be able to steer you in the right direction...

My ios is set at 100 and I had a full battery I was also using a strobe flash

Welcome to the forum

If you fill out your profile we can better answer any questions that you might have.
You can do that at http://nikonites.com/profile.php?do=editprofile

Some useful links
http://support.nikonusa.com/app/ans.../nikon-product-manuals-available-for-download
Nikon | Imaging Products | Digitutor


Thanks

Post the EXIF data for that shot. And filling out your profile will let us know what camera you have.

These don't look grainy. The forum reduces the file, so we can't really zoom in and see exactly what you see. Are you still seeing the problem here as they are posted? Maybe we are not calling the same thing 'grainy'. The focus might be a little soft. Background and foreground is blurred a bit, but you probably wanted that. The sky is blown out a bit.
Are you shooting raw or jpg? Jpg fine? Maybe your jpg quality setting got lowered from 'fine'.

Another thing that will impact on the noise in an image is sharpening....If You have noise in an image then sharpen it, it will make it worse...

The image does not look grainy here. I was shooting RAW and jpeg. How do you change the jpeg quality? but even my raw files were grainy. Also how do I get it to have a crisp focus. I am sorry this camera is new to me. I have tried to read the manual for it but it did not help.

I think this bears repeating yet again...........which camera are you talking about?? We can't help you if we don't know what you're using! Fill out the rest of your profile!

tiff1324 said:

The image does not look grainy here. I was shooting RAW and jpeg. How do you change the jpeg quality? but even my raw files were grainy. Also how do I get it to have a crisp focus. I am sorry this camera is new to me. I have tried to read the manual for it but it did not help.

Click to expand...

How you change the jpeg quality is definitely in your manual.

How do you get crisp focus? Don't know. What camera are you using? I use AF in my camera for MY focus. Or shooting manual mode, I use the focus ring on the lens.

Your camera is new to you. OK, I understand that. But don't expect to learn everything overnight. Seriously....read your manual....not start to finish....just on the topics you're having trouble with. Everything you need to know about your camera is in that manual.

I will assume you have a D600 because you posted in a D600 forum.

The picture does not look grainy to me, though the boy looks a little underexposed. That's probably because the bright sun in the trees caused your camera to read more light on your subject than there really was. In other words, the camera measured the light for the whole scene, and that bright sunlight made for a shorter exposure. If you later try to brighten a darker area on your computer, there will be some noise in that area.

If you are shooting with D600, remember it has a wide DR. This means that you can set the exposure for the brightest portion (the sky in your case), and then recover the shadows. Of course the recovery can only be done on RAW and not JPEG.


Here are some links, though some are for D800, it holds for D600
The low-key high-tech NIKON SYSTEM: Understanding the Nikon D600 PART III - MORE ON D600 SHADOW RECOVERY IN JPG & WHAT SOFTWARE?
Nikon D800 shadow recovery-dynamic range - BCMTouring
Dynamic range test on the Nikon D800 with sample images |

As regards out of focus areas, they are totally dependent on the aperture. The wider the aperture the shallower the DOF.