Camera woes!

[doombuggy driver]

We need to buy a new camera and I need help!

The Digital Camera we have is a Kodak easy share 3.2 megapixel (it's 3 years old) CX7300. The biggest problem we have is that all of our night photos or photos of anything in motion are horrible. They are out of focus and blurry in almost every shot. The daytime photos are great but we want to take pictures of things at night when we go to Disneyland. We need to keep the price under $150 can anyone help?

[Sambo]

Try a portable tripod. I used the CT-8 the last two times I went to disneyland, and it is cheap, small, as well as quick and easy to set up (less than 15 sec including mounting the camera)

The blur is primarily due to movement while the shutter is open. A tripod is much cheaper than the alternative and more effective as well.

[aimster]

I have 3 digital cameras and one is a Kodak EasyShare CX7330. I've taken low light/nighttime photos with it and they've come out pretty good. There should be a setting on the camera for nighttime photos. You might want to try taking some shots with that setting on. Or like suggested, get a tripod.

[FrumiousBoojum]

If you want great night photos and need to keep it under $150, find a film SLR and a lens that's capable of f/1.4 or f/1.8. Some digital point and shoots are decent in night, but you're not going to get the quality as a film camera (or dSLR) loaded with ISO 800 and faster.

Embrace the film!

[flynnibus]

Cheap Point and Shoots rarely do well in low light.

Plus your blur in night shots is exactly what you'd expect. The shutter needs to stay open longer to capture more light.. longer shutter + movement = blur.

Nicer digital cameras will let you up the speed.. but the trade off is noise in the picture.

You really need to be extra careful with holding the camera still with night shots if not using a tripod. Try looking for a camera with adjustable ISO speeds.

$300+ will get you into the better Point and Shoot digital cams. I hadn't done much research at sub $200.

[figment1986]

look into cannon cameras...

i don't have that much problems at night...

[alphabassetgrrl]

If you can set the ISO (film speed) on the camera, bump it up to something high. Mine doesn't let me go above 400ISO but others have better settings.

The tripod was a good suggestion. I need to get one for mine; night shots usually want a 4second exposure and there's *no* way to hold the camera that still for that long. The other thing you can try is setting the camera on something while you take the picture. My friend has a stuffed beanie-baby moose that she uses as a camera rest. Camera on moose on something solid= good pictures.

Good luck!

[figment1986]

my Canon PowerShot goes to 800 ISO... and it was not that expensive...

and it makes light metering and balancing easy...

http://www.amazon.com/Canon-PowerSho...&s=electronics
(just so you can see the specs and such)

[aimster]

Both my Canon PowerShot & Kodak EasyShare V603 go up to at least 800 ISO.

[doombuggy driver]

Thanks for all of the advice! I'll play with my camera a little and see if I can get it to change!

[Mac Daddy]

The Fugi Finepix F20 takes amazing nightshots and I've seen prices starting as low as $148 online. We just purchased the F30 and I was amazed at the clarity when I selected the anti-shake and night shooting mode. The f20 has 6.3 megapixels and ISO up to 2000.

These were taken on our F30: