My pictures are Gainy with my digital olympus SP-510 UZ Camera. The image quality is at HQ 3072x2304, but when I uploaded the pictures they were grainy and a bad quality. Not smooth and sharp like my old 4 Mega Pixal camera. Whats going on!?
I just got it this christmas and here are two links of pictures I have taken. One is a good quality and it was taken outside, the other is a bad quality also taken outside but behind a wall. Both were taken on auto mode.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v330/i...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v330/i... Your camera is probably choosing the ISO automatically, also. The brightly lit shot will be at ISO 50 or 100 - whatever your cameras lowest ISO is. The lowest ISO gives the least grain.
The shot by the wall - which is a nice photo, by the way - is in subdued lighting and your camera chose to go to ISO 400 to allow a faster shutter speed so you would not be so likely to blur the image by shaking. Higher ISO's tend to be noisier.
Go out of the AUTO mode and into "P" mode, if this exists on your camera. You will find that it functions pretty much the same as AUTO, except that it lets you set a few things yourself, such as ISO or when to use flash or not. Select "P" and set the ISO to a lower value, such as 100, and the digital noise will go away. Be alert to the shutter speed though. If it is 1/30 or lower, you will have to take a deep breath and steady yourself to avoid blur caused by camera shaking. I hope that solved your problem for you, then. Report It
do you have a dirty lens? What you're seeing is called digital "noise". It's an inescapable side effect of cramming more pixels into the same space. Because the pixels are smaller, you have to boost the signal from each pixel to get any information from it. When you boost the signal, you also boost the electrical interference that goes along with it. That shows up as the grain you're seeing.
That's why 4 and 5 megapixel cameras often have smoother looking images than 7 or 8 megapixel ones - there are less pixels in the same area, so each pixel is bigger. Bigger pixels pick up more light so you need to boost them less.
To fix it, have a look at Neat Image (http://www.neatimage.com) . It's a free trial and pretty cheap to buy - I use it a lot! In PC300054.jpg (the indoor, against the wall, portrait style) all I can see, it is about noise (red dots in shadows/dark areas). So ..you may need to use a different ISO (lower) and a noise reduction software. Also check if your camera has any kind of built-in noise reduction option.
Some cameras are very noisy at high ISO (like ISO 400 or ISO 1600). Solution lower the ISO + add more light+third part nose reduction software (I am using Noiseware from Imagenomic).
The outside shot looks OK for me. | 
