Indoors quality A40

[Bimbobo]

Hi,
I have an A40, and I am very pleased with the quality of the pictures expept the ones taken in the house with poor light.
The are not sharp and poor focused sometimes.
I tried to play a bit with the manual settings, but I'm not an expert.
The AWB in the auto setting does not seem to work very well indoors.
I tried in P-mode with different setups, but still not good.
Is there any suggestion.. except buy a newer model.
Please explain not in "professional" language.
Regards

[Jon]

Shooting indoors, you'll need to use flash. Otherwise either it'll be too dark (if you try to use a high shutter speed on manual) or you'll get a blurry picture since the camera sets a shutter speed that's slower than you can hold steady for. Using one of the "Creative" modes (the ones with letters rather than pictures on the dial) will let you set the ISO to something high(ish), but that brings in the problem of sensor "noise" (speckles in dark areas of the pictures). If you use flash, but the subject's too far away you'll get the same problem. I don't remember the A40's flash range, but I'd be surprised if it was much over 15' normally.

What you need to do in these cases is use a tripod to hold the camera steady. You probably shouldn't try hand-holding at speeds below 1/60 - 1/90 second as a rule of thumb. If you look at the pictures closely, you will probably see that they aren't overall fuzzy, but that they seem to have little streaks or trails off the objects in the picture. These will show up most in bright lights or reflections.

[Bimbobo]

Hi Jon,
thanks for the answer...
It's difficult to use the tripod when takink shots of my son...
I'll try to hold the camera more still and see if it helps, and I know it is difficult to take good picture with poor light.
Thanks.
Regards