New to Digital Photo's: Please help me figure out why this pic looks so bad :(

[tonywalker23]

i bought my wife a sony w80 i think htats what its called,

it is 7.2 mp.

i took a few pics and some came out good and some bad. please look at the links and help me or maybe some advice for a newbie.

ive posted links to 2 pics, one looks good and one looks bad.
note: each one is a little over 2mb's.

thanks!!!!!!

http://www.preachertony.com/pics/DSC00002.JPG
http://www.preachertony.com/pics/DSC00026.JPG

 

[Eraserhead]

They both look OK to me, as a non expert . The second could have the red-eye removed though.

 

[Macmadant]

i bought my wife a sony w80 i think htats what its called,

it is 7.2 mp.

i took a few pics and some came out good and some bad. please look at the links and help me or maybe some advice for a newbie.

ive posted links to 2 pics, one looks good and one looks bad.
note: each one is a little over 2mb's.

thanks!!!!!!

http://www.preachertony.com/pics/DSC00002.JPG
http://www.preachertony.com/pics/DSC00026.JPG

All Photo's Look Like that at there full resolution, when looking in iphoto they look great because there only half the full resolution, unless you plan on printing them on A2 size paper i shouldn't worry, also i always found pictures look a hell of a lot better when took outside

 

[CanadaRAM]

One thing to try

The backgrounds in both photos are excessivley busy. If the camera has a zoom, try backing up a bit, and zooming in on your subject to frame them, then focus. This will have the effect of bringing the subject into focus and the background out of focus slightly. Depth of Field Link1 Link2 Link 3. (Those should get you started). If you can use manual controls on the camera, you can also make the aperture to be larger (larger F value) to manipulate the depth of field

After the fact, you can simulate this in Photoshop by creating a Selection or a mask tightly around your subject, selecting the inverse, adding a tiny amount of feathering, then applying a small amount of a blur filter to the backround areas.

 

[Lone Deranger]

For the indoors pic it looks like the camera chose a much higher ISO setting due to the lack of available light by the looks of it. Bit strange as a flash was used. It would explain the excessive grain/colour noise. It also looks as if the in-camera noise reduction software kicked in rather heavily and blurred a lot of details out in an attempt to suppress the noise. Grain like this will also exacerbate jpeg artifacting and increase your file sizes.
Try setting the camera manually to use lower ISO settings when there is plenty of daylight and choose to store the photos as RAW files rather than jpegs.

I would suggest reading up a little bit about the basics of photography in order to understand the relationship of f-stops, depth of field, shutterspeeds, ISO settings and how they all influence the outcome of your photographs.
Letting the camera choose the settings for you is good enough for most people in most circumstances. If you want to elevate your shots to a higher standard a bit of camera 101 will go a long way.

 

[xfiftyfour]

I take it someone walked yesterday? Congrats to whoever it was!

Go tigers!