My Canon S10 works great with daylight, and it works great in poor light with the flash, but it really has a problem when there is substantial room light but it needs the flash to fill in. The problem is that with any motion, the room light component really blurs the picture.

After quite a bit of work, my observation is that in the flash mode the camera opens the shutter at 1/15 second, and adjusts the flash time to get the correct exposure. The flash time is short and can take a sharp picture with motion. However, during the 1/15 second, room light can really blur motion. This is not a trivial problem, and it can mess up most flash shots.

My only solution so far is to set the camera to the "fast shutter" mode, which changes the shutter speed to 1/20 second in the flash mode, and to set the exposure compensation to +2. This gives a pretty good picture much of the time, but usually too bright so I have to adjust the brightness with post processing.

I'm talking about flash shots in a normal room, from a few feet to about 10 feet. I haven't tried to push the distance.

Questions:

1. Has anyone else seen this with the S10? 2. Do you think this is a normal S10 problem, or is it just me? 3. Do other digital cameras have this kind of problem?

-- Charles Hull (c_hull@ix.netcom.com), February 06, 2000

Answers

I think we're all having the same problems. There is also a really hardcore yellow problem in indoor artificial light shots. I wonder if this is fixable through firmware or whether we're stuck with it because I would be absolutely in love with this camera if it wasn't for the blur and color problems

-- patrick flynn (el_chuppa_cabre@hotmail.com), March 29, 2000.

I don't have an S10, but I had a couple of possibly useless thoughts:

1. The hard yellow cast is probably a live with it and correct it in the editor problem. My PDR-M1 had a similar green/yellowish cast. But, it would be really nice if they could do a firmware upgrade. Go light that fire! :-)

2. Just for S & G: If you place the camera on a tripod, set the flash back to the original problematic setting, and actuate the shutter with the timer to eliminate any camera shake, do you still get the blur? Maybe it's camera shake? If it only does it when the subjects are moving you probably need a higher shutter speed and possibly more light in order to get the camera to select one.

3. Are you sure you're in forced flash, not a slow synchro flash mode?

-- Gerald M. Payne (gmp@francomm.com), March 29, 2000.

Hi, what I did to improve the yellow tinge is to set the whitebalance to the "lightbulb" mode. This seems to reduce the yellow tinge when using the flash.

-- Flan Ker (flankerfeed_nospam@hotmail.com), June 06, 2001.