blury problems with manual mode

[normatti]

I love taking pictures with manual mode at night because it doesn't block out the backround. But when I do so with my SD700, the pictures comes out blury. Is their anything in the setting I have to change to make the picture not be blury? Here is an example;


http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/2250/img0058bs4.jpg


This picture isn't too blury because I was holding it VERY stedy. But you get the idea.

[toriaj]

The blurryness is coming from your hands not holding the camera completely still. No one can. You need to use a tripod for this type of shot. If you don't have a tripod, you can try using the top of your car, a tree stump, etc. But you simply cannot hand-hold the camera at these long shutter speeds without getting camera shake.

But, you do have good settings, and good use of flash in this situation. Brings out the subject against the well-lit background.

[jonalta]

Your pict was taken with 0.8 sec shutter speed. This would be very very difficult to capture a steady shot (even with camera stabilization). If you are using the manual mode, try using at least 1/30sec or faster. You can also try increasing ISO (but makes more noise). If you use AUTO mode, you would notice that the camera usually chooses 1/60 when using the flash. But then, you would also loose the background lights. You can choose to also use the NightShot or NightLandscape in SCN mode.