Talk to me about cameras and their settings.

Nessia

We bought a Nikon CoolPix P100. We almost bought a dslr but I'm so camera dumb I thought it would be a waste to have so much camera when I wouldn't know crap about it. Also my MIL has a Nikon dslr so if I really wanted to use one, I could use hers. Not to mention it saved us about 200+. Anways....

When I'm taking pictures in the "auto" mode I get a lot of blurring in the pictures. Even if the kids aren't moving very much. I was pretty disappointed and was thinking about exchanging it. I tried the shutter priority setting and the picture are so much better. Why? What was happening in the "auto" mode? Who knows what all the other settings are. Someone should hold a camera tutorial to teach us the basics. I'm reading the manual but it's not helping. 

 

Mrs.Purdue

what was the lighting situation?  if it was low light, then it's likely that the shutter speed was too low, so when you switched to shutter priority, it sets the shutter speed first (actually, i think you would be able to set it, but i imagine it has a default over 1/100) and then adjusts the other settings.  in auto, nothing has a default, so it really just guesses.  i've seen a lot of point-and-shoot auto settings around 1/40, which is entirely too low to even shoot a stationary object. 

MrsMillerTime

Are they blurry when you download them to your computer or only blurry on the camera playback?  My parents have a Nikon (I think it's a CoolPix) and the pictures are always blurry on the camera playback but the look fine when you view them on a computer.  It annoys the crap out of them and they've thought about getting a new camera because of it.

Nessia

Mrs.Purdue:

what was the lighting situation?  if it was low light, then it's likely that the shutter speed was too low, so when you switched to shutter priority, it sets the shutter speed first (actually, i think you would be able to set it, but i imagine it has a default over 1/100) and then adjusts the other settings.  in auto, nothing has a default, so it really just guesses.  i've seen a lot of point-and-shoot auto settings around 1/40, which is entirely too low to even shoot a stationary object. 

It was trying it out during DS's bath time but it would happen other times too.

CollieJade

Sounds like the shutter speed in the auto mode isn't fast enough.  It may just be a downfall of that particular camera.  That, or you're not set on a high enough resolution, or you're zoomed in too far.  Have you tried turning on your image stabilizer?