Please Help! Powershot S30 Lighting Problems

[Fanman22]

I'm looking for some help with my S30...here's the problem, it seems that whenever I take pictures of objects/scenes that are more than, oh I don't know, 35ft away, the image appears dark and almost colorless. For example, I was at a graduation inside a church that was moderately lit. I tried to take a picture of some pillars and this is what I get below. The third picture is with the camera on the nighshot setting. This was the best I could get. I'm assuming the blur is because I wasn't using a tripod for stabalization but there has to be someway to take pictures in this type of lighting without using a tripod. After all, the church was nowhere near being dark. I would greatly appreciate any help that anyone can offer. Thanks in advance.... http://img74.photobucket.com/albums/v225/Fanman22/Graduation_001.jpg don't know what these spots are but they usually appear when I have this lighting problem.
http://img74.photobucket.com/albums/v225/Fanman22/Graduation_003.jpg
http://img74.photobucket.com/albums/v225/Fanman22/Graduation_006.jpg

[stopbath]

The flash is simply not powerful enough to reach the pillars. Check your manual for the flash range, but the camera is a compact, which means the flash is quite small, and thus the range is small.

Using a long exposure is the only way you can get those pillars. A tripod or putting the camera on a table or chair (or mini tripod) would help the image be nice and sharp. If you push the ISO up to 400 (and suffer more video noise) you can gain some relative distance from the flash.

Those whitish round dots, are dust particles in front of the lens, that got blasted with the light from the flash. This will happen any time dust in front of the lens is lit by a strong light, and is quite common on small cameras.