Camera Trouble?

[Carmelg]

I have an Olympus SP-800uz camera +cnt take pictures indoors at concert as shots come out blurry from backlash of lighting from stage.Can someone with said camera help me out as i paid alot of money for it and its very frustrating fact i cant find instructions and end up with no useful pictures.Thank you !

[Fitzer]

What settings are you using, you want the ISO as high as practical (this will add noise but better than blur), the aperture should be open as far as possible and you want a shutter speed of at least 1/100 (higher if you're zoomed in). You don't want to let the camera make the decisions as it will want to use flash which is of no use to you, concert photography is a very specialized area and really needs specialist kit.
BTW the blur isn't down to the on stage lighting or rather it is the camera selecting too long a shutter speed because of the low light available.

[Carmelg]

Thanks Fitzer ,i Just had it on automatic as I stupidly thought it would change in accordance to envoirnment i was in .Ur information was perfect ,ill try it out tomorrow nght at Girls Aloud in Belfast.Fingers crossed.I have ISO up to highest 3200 +have it set on i auto scan magic which means the settings change to shooting situation.Hope im doin right .Thanks again for help

[Fitzer]

Good luck, the problem with the camera trying to work out what you want is that it has to average things out, in a concert situation most of what the camera can see is dark with one spot of brightness (the stage), it tries to average out the light across the scene so ends up with too slow a shutter speed.

[chrisgel]

The instruction manual in pdf is here
http://www.olympusamerica.com/files/oima_cckb/SP-800UZ_Instruction_Manual_EN.pdf

[Answerprancer]

Point it away from bright stage lights if you can or you'll get horrific lens flare. Agree about raising the ISO, though beware - this particular camera is prone to lots of noise at higher ISO levels. Don't go all the way to 3200 unless it's particularly dark and there's an image you REALLY want - it will be very noisy. Try to keep the camera as still as possible when you take the shots, put a big memory card in and take as many shots as possible.
Here's review that will tell you about its strong/weak points:
http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/olympus_sp_800uz_review/

[Carmelg]

Thanks alot to all for taking time out of your busy nights to answere my query.Im truly grateful,to me theres nothing worse spending the evening taking pics at concert for none to come out right.Now thanks to your help thatl be a thing of the past.Thanks again

[EDDIE51]

Does it have a 'spot metering' mode if so use that and aim the 'spot' at the stage but away from the lights. Other wise it will 'average' the meter reading and the stage itself will be under exposed due to the lights.
Try setting it on fully manual and take a series of photos at say 1/100th second with diffrent apertures. You will soon see what exposures work , then just stick with it.

[Answerprancer]

Eddie - it doesn't have fully manual, it's a sort of cross between a bridge and a P&S.

[Answerprancer]

...btw, still loving those manual focus lenses :-)

[Sharingan]

Are you in the pit taking pics or trying to shoot from the crowd?

[Answerprancer]

I let my friend's two young sons have go on my guitar a while back and one of them said "can I have the leaf?" meaning the pick I had been using. Bless him, he didn't know what it was called so he just decided it was called a leaf!
They both ended up calling it a leaf because I didn't want to tell them its real name as I found it so endearing.

[Answerprancer]

^ ah there's my mysteriously lost post that should have gone in the thread "things they say".
Apologies - wrong thread!