Canon S95 - Increasing Focus Area At Night?

Hi folks,
I'm after a bit of info on trying to increase the focal area taking shots in the dark.
I do a lot of fishing and when I take shots of myself and my fish I need to be reasonably close so I can get a decent focus and get the most from the flash.
What i'm finding is that the middle area is obviously the most in focus.
What I want to be able to do is have as much of the full image in focus as possible.
I appreciate that there is the darkness issue but am I to assume that I would shoot in AV mode and open the F number to as high as I can?
Any thoughts and suggestions would be very much appreciated.
Cheers
ian

If you want more in focus, you need a higher F number, i.e. a smaller aperture opening. If you're using flash, that should not be an issue, just close it down as far as it'll go. That said, with a P&S, the DOF is so great that you should be able to leave it at pretty much any aperture, just make sure the camera isn't right in your face and you'll have sufficient DOF.

is it out of focus because it is a noisy image? Or do you want to increase the DOF. do you have any sample images of what effect you are trying to avoid?

if you just want to increase the DOF, then yes lower the f stop. however you may have to bump up the ISO to get the exposure correct which may cause the image to appear more noisy and less sharp.

The flash in my s100 isnt very strong (i imagine that your s95's flash will be similar), i usually have an external flash YN 560 in my car, which works great with the s100 if you set it as an optical slave. this way i can keep a low ISO and have a small aperture to keep things infocus, pretty good for group shots of people at night IMO.

Cheers for your replies folks... i'll give it a go increasing the f stop and see how I get on.

If you're holding the camera and pointing it backward, you might want to try macro mode. Push the left side of the rear control dial and the. Choose the flower setting.