blurred pictures

[tgnych]

Hi everyone -
Can someone advise how I can improve on the following, whether using or not using a tripod?

I am the happy owner of a canon a70 photo camera which is my first experience with digital photography.
I was using a canon eos 100 before.

While I am generally pretty happy with the purchase I find it difficult to have sharp pictures when taking night or low light shots. It looks to me like the automatic setups don't allow for a sharp picture under such lighting conditions.

Also, it seems like my tripod is not stable enough, although it worked perfectly with the previous canon eos camera.

Glad to read your advice.

[gsmx2]

I would take the camera off the automatic settings to take low light pictures. Instead I would set the camera to APETURE PRIORITY and get the apeture open. I would also turn up the ISO settings to help get higher speeds.

I am a little concerned that you are still getting blurred pictures when using a tripod, but since you mentioned that you are generally happy with the camera, I make the assumption that you are getting good photos in normal light conditions.

Scott

[tgnych]

Hi & thks for your posting -
daylight pictures are perfect.

problem only occurs in low lighting conditions and I don't understand why this happens, as I would expect the automated adjustments to address this.

Also, I would expect to be able to take quality shots without tripod.

[belmondo]

There might be insufficient light for the camera to autofocus. I don't know if there's a manual override on the a70 or not, but if there's any way to focus manually, I'd try it.

[tgnych]

well I did manually set my aperture at 6.3, from 4.8 and had to select the flash to get an acceptable shutter speed. it definitely improved the quality of the shot at short distance because of the faster shutter speed. without the flash the camera will stick to a 1" shutter speed which is as before, thus cause for blur.

also, using the flash obviousy dims the background which is another issue to solve and for which I am grateful to receive suggestions.