Having trouble, Help!

Jack,

Is the flash going off when you take a picture? I am assuming you are not doing anything fancy and just using an auto setting…if the flash is turned off and the light is a bit low the shutter speed is slowed down which will result in blurry movement. Double check that your flash is set to go off and try again to see if there is a difference.

Your shutter speed is probably less than 1/8th of a second. On another level your pretty rigid when you shoot-the non moving parts of the scene are not blurred as much-that's good. Using a self timer helps. Then there is no chance of distorting the shot with the push of the shutter producing the blur usually vertical . Try to hold your breath, keep the camera held by both hands and against your head and use the timer for 5 seconds or so if possible. Any then enjoy the result even with blur. The alternative is a flash picture that gets it all but looks like a deer in the headlights. Also , a cheap tripod can improve everything, as can a white card to bounce the flash up to the ceiling. Much more like natural light. Experiment. Your film is free.

I agree with some of what has been stated. If everything in the shot is blurred, that probably means camera shake, which means that you were moving (you need a tripod) or else your finger moved the camera at the shot time. If only the subject is blurred, then chances are that your camera saw some light, and there was no flash, so it shot with a slow shutter speed, and the subject was moving during that large fraction of a second. A tripod will not help so much for the subject only blur.

What are your alternatives? One is to turn on the flash. The flash goes very fast, and there is seldom much subject movement during the flash period. Another idea is to manually control the camera's ISO setting to be a higher number. That means more sensitive to light. That means that the camera can pick its shutter speed as it did before, but it will pick something quicker, which means less subject movement during the shutter period.

This is a harsh alternative, but that is the reason why some people pay good money for good cameras with big lenses. Those allow more light to reach the sensor, and the ISO settings can be pushed very high. But, if you don't shoot that sort of thing too much, it may be overkill.

–B.G.–

Most of the pic's were taken inside with the flash off. I tried it with the flash on, also got the same results. I tried A different ISO, not much difference. I tried it on auto, but most of the time it was on a program mode, were I could adjust differnt things. I was also using the zoom lens alot, my ISO setting goes all the way up to 1600, and I think I even tried it on that setting. If I can figure this thing out I will really like this camera. I tried the Cannon 1400 but was dissapointed with the quality of the pic's, so I returned it for this one, as some members here liked the Panasonic, and recommended it over the cannon.

If the flash is on auto and the room light is fairly high, it won't give enough flash (if any) to freeze the motion. If you can force the flash to fire all the time, do that. Get as close as you can too– a small flash doesn't do much at distance. Raising the ISO will get the shutter speed up, but set the flash to "always on" too.

Using the zoom will limit the light even more.How far away were you? The higher ISO settings should have worked although more digital noise will be produced. You will have to be methodical to isolate what is going on. I suggest searching reviews of the camera to begin with.

Flash on and flash off got same results?

Most compact cameras have a pretty short flash range, like 9-10 feet. If the subjects looked the same blurry way with or without flash, then that suggests that they were beyond your flash range. Therefore, the quick strobe flash didn't really do anything for the subject. Increasing the camera's ISO setting will increase that range slightly, but not tremendously. If you increase the ISO setting by two stops, that will get you a doubling of the flash range (one stop).

Lots of these compact cameras will take excellent photos. The problem is that many shooters want automatically excellent photos. That is OK, except that the camera doesn't always know how to interpret the light at the scene coming its way. The solution is that the shooter has to learn the automatic tricks that the camera has, and then be able to disable some of the automation. In other words, you need to be able to turn the thing to some more manual mode where you can control it to suit your human eye.

Disclaimer: When I went camping to Alaska last year, approximately 80% of my entire load of checked and carryon baggage was camera gear.

–B.G.–

Jack.. you've ran into one limitation of the point and shoot type of camera. Your lens is simply not fast enough, f3.3-f4.9, to be able to deal with moving subject in low light. The best you will be able to do is crank your ISO up as high as you dare and hope for the best.

Good luck!

-Dan

Jack
Take the setting off iA.
Set the flash onto Auto or forced flash on , the ISO at 400 .
I think that the camera was on the slow sync/red eye setting.
That will slow the shutter speed down to pick up available light.
BTW, with "my" setting the background will be darker.
Keep in mind that the flash will cover a longer distance with the lens set on wide than on tele .(almost twice as far…)
Use the setting you originally had for static subjects.
Franco

I have a ZS3 and whenever I intend to shoot moving objects with it, I usually switch it to "sports" mode.

When I was taking the pics of the dancers on stage, I was about 20 ft away with about 3x zoom, no flash, with flash, and messing with the ISO, I think I just need to take more photos, and document what settings I use on each photo, until I get the tweaking down. Thanks for everyones help, Jack

Jack, I think you established that your subject was beyond the range of the flash, so with or without shouldn't have made much difference. You might be able to crank up the ISO to the maximum before image quality goes to hell.

–B.G.–

Bob you must be like me, don't require a lot of sleep, still up posting like me. Here are some more pic's I took today in the macro mode.

This seems to work really well, especially if I zoom in on the image in play back mode, you can see all the little hairs on the flower peddels

Just about every digital camera on earth can get a good image from a sunny flower. The trick is in being able to control the camera so that you get good results in the bad lighting situations like the indoor action scenes.

Before you try the flowers again, do this. Get a sheet of white cloth. Using yardsticks or coat hangers or anything else, build a frame that will support the white cloth in a cylinder that surrounds the flower, including the top. Now shoot the camera in through a hole in the cloth. See what you get. You will get away from all of the high-contrast light, and you can get into the subtle stuff.

–B.G.–

Nice work getting the flowers in focus which is not easy with a shallow depth of field with close-ups.
With the motion photos, the higher ISO should allow you to open the aperture wider (lower number f-stop) to get a faster shutter speed which in turn stops action.

"With the motion photos, the higher ISO should allow you to open the aperture wider (lower number f-stop) to get a faster shutter speed which in turn stops action."

Is that what you meant to say?

[Higher ISO allows you to close the aperture down (higher number f-stop)].

–B.G.–

When I was taking the pics of the dancers on stage, I was about 20 ft away with about 3x zoom, no flash, with flash, and messing with the ISO, I think I just need to take more photos, and document what settings I use on each photo, until I get the tweaking down. Thanks for everyones help, Jack

Jack, many cameras (all?) already record this information with the picture, and I see that your first picture does show it.

Eugene, many cameras can record the EXIF information with the image file. However, if you shoot JPEG files, you may or may not ever get convenient access to the EXIF. Most serious cameras can shoot RAW files, and they do record the EXIF information. Then, when you move those RAW files to your computer for processing into TIF or JPEG, you typically have access to the EXIF. Often, the processing allows you to save or not save the EXIF with the TIF or JPEG.

–B.G.–

Regardless, his camera records EXIF in his JPEG's. It's easy to view with browser plugins, some online galleries and desktop applications like Google Picasa and Adobe Lightroom. I personally use XnView the most. I've had digital cameras up to 10 years old, and they've also all recorded EXIF information in the JPEG's.

Bob, I think we are saying the same thing!

Both of these might be correct exposures:
ISO. 100. f 5.6. 1/250

ISO. 400. f5.6. 1/500

The higher the ISO less light is needed for the correct exposure.

At any f/stop the correct shutter speed will be faster at ISO 400 than at the same f/stop at ISO 100.

To get the fastest shutter speed at the correct exposure, open the aperture as wide as possible. The more light that comes in, the faster the shutter speed needs to be.

ISO 400 will allow a wider aperture than an ISO 100. A faster shutter speed stops more of the action which means less blur!

Phew. It is confusing.

The shutter speed a f/16 ISO 400 will be faster than f/16 ISO 100 and the shutter speed at f/4 ISO 400 will be even faster.

"ISO 400 will allow a wider aperture than an ISO 100."

No, we are not saying the same thing, and yes, you are confused.

The above statement should be that ISO 400 will allow a narrower aperture than at ISO 100.

–B.G.–

Jack,

What you are experiencing is the Shutter Speed-ISO-Aperture triangle. Higher ISO and wider (lower number) aperture can give you a faster shutter speed which is what you need. Indoor and low light photography is challenging and either requires a powerful flash or a good lens that will allow in more light.

In your photos, the first one was shot at 1/5 sec. at f/4 and ISO 1600. Second shot was at 1/10s f/4 and ISO 400. In both shots, the moving subjects were blurry because of a slow shutter speed. You would need at around 1/100 of a second to get a cleaner shot. In your case, you were already at ISO 1600 f/4 in the first shot. f/4 is the maximum aperture you could achieve at the zoom level you were using so there isn't much else you could do for the first one other than turning on the flash. The second shot would benefit from a higher ISO setting which would allow the shutter to freeze the action better. Also, shoot at wide angle so your lens gets the widest (lowest number) aperture it can use; when indoors, you are not going to zoom in much anyway so you should have plenty of pixels to give you a decent photo if you crop out what you don't need.

When I shoot in low light situations where I cannot use flash, I use high ISO and deal with the graininess of the photo. I always say that I can fix graininess in post processing but I cannot fix blurriness. But there are some situations where I know I just cannot get the shot so I do the best I (or my camera) can.

Incidentally, I use a Lumix LX3 as my point and shoot which has a good lens down to f/2 wide open and zoomed out. My full size SLR is a Canon 5D.

Camera geek signature:
Canon 5D, 24-105 f/4L IS, 70-200 f/4L IS, 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 DO IS, 50 f/1.8 II, Speedlite 430EX II, B+W Filters

"I always say that I can fix graininess in post processing but I cannot fix blurriness."

How true!

Once in a while, you are allowing some blur as an artistic element. Outside of that, blur just looks bad.

Fixing graininess is a tricky maneuver. If you have a little bit of "high ISO grain," then you can probably knock it out with some good software. I have used a couple of different programs, and if you have a predictable amount of grain that is well-characterized, you can knock it out nicely. Once you get into a situation of "very high ISO bad grain," then you are stuck. Then about all you can do is to try to get a newer and more serious camera with a lower-noise sensor, but that gets expensive. Depending on which version of Canon 5D you have, it has a good sensor.

–B.G.–

He's kind of in the same boat as I am, except I'm shooting outdoors trying to get flowers that someone else said are easy to get. They're not so easy when the wind is shaking it about like a tuning fork! For best results, I've been bumping my ISO up to 200 and setting the aperture as close to f2.8 as possible. That reduces the shutter speed as much as possible to capture the picture with as little motion as possible, which means less blur. Unfortunately I don't know if this is as easy to do with the Panasonic in question.