Fuji HS10 noisy grainy pictures

[james143611]

Hello all,

I could do with some help in setting up my HS10 bridge for airliner shots, I am still at a new stage to this and whilst taking stills of statics is excellent, moving planes is something else.

Auto mode doesn't work well often resulting in the odd motion blur, but it will often use a low shutter speed for moving planes, but I find Shutter Priority helps however it really does make them grainy, I'm noticing this even on a clear sunny day. If it's cloudy then it really starts to get difficult to take a good shot. I can't figure out how to fix it in my Serif photoshop either. Is there a more ideal program setting that would be easier, or anythibg in SP I could try adjusting?

I tend to switch the shutter to around 1600 or more on a very clear day with no cloulds, easing the numbers down in the evening as the light gets darker.

I tend to go lowet to 640 or 550 if ot's a drab rainy day but often they come out really noisy?

Does anyone have any tips or tricks they could assist me with please?

Any help would be appreciated


James

[mach one]

I have no experience with the camera that you mention but here is my two pennies worth

you say for flying aircraft you use shutter priority and push the shutter speed to 1600/sec for the camera to do this it will need to set the lens to its maximum aperture ie wide open to get enough light to correctly expose the image, then if it still needs more light then it will increase the ISO or film speed in the old days, as the iso goes up the picture becomes more grainy

some cameras cope with this better than others but that is my guess where your issue lies camera setting a high iso resulting in Grainy images

[mach one]

I have just had a look at some of your images on flickr and can see the problem that you mention

your shot of B-2437 Yangtze River Express 747-4F the settings were F/8.0, 1/800th sec, and iso 400 resulting in a grainy image

your shot of OO-SFZ Brussels Airlines A330 the settings were F/6.4, 1/640th sec, and iso 100 resulting in a less grainy image

I dont know how much manual control you have on your camera but a couple of things to try, use aperture priority and set the lowest F number you can get the lens wide open and see what results you get, if you have a custom setting on your camera then set the aperture to the lowest F number and the ISO to 100 and let the camera set the shutter speed

it is always worth a trip to your local to play with camera settings and and see how you get on expect a lot of rubbish shots but you will see what settings work for your camera

also it may be worth looking at a software package to reduce noise or grain in your photos

[WingNut]

I always.... always.... always use Shutter Priority when shooting aircraft in flight. I also make sure I have the following settings when I do....

Aircraft with propellers..... because I like to see blur in the prop. Real aircraft don't fly well with a stopped prop.
- while in flight 1/320 sec regardless of the type of aircraft
- when on the ground never more than 1/320 sec. I try and use less when I can. Less = more prop blur

Civilian jets....
- I try not to go over 1/800 sec and prefer 1/320 sec. They aren't moving fast enough to need a higher setting.

Military jets
- usually between 1/500 sec to 1/1000 sec

ISO settings
- according to the natural light conditions. Normally nothing over 400 is required unless I'm shooting with my 5D MkIII then the sky is the limit.
Over 400 on most cameras produce too much noise for my liking.

When you shoot on Shutter Priority the camera will select the proper aperture according to the rest of your settings and normally that is sufficient. A quick look
at the info on your screen will tell you if you have to + or - your aperture setting. Darker days you want to + and on brighter days you might want to -

Disclamer..... These are personal settings that I have figured out after years of shooting and thousands of mistakes. I'm not an expert and have on occasion forgotten to
change my settings from a previous shoot ending up with less than desirable shots. One time I forgot to take off my polarizing filter after driving 250 km's to make an airshow
and for the life of me couldn't understand why the exposure on each shot was off by a country mile.