DX 4330 Low Light Focus
 

I have been using a DX4330 sporadically since Christmas. I am having problems getting the camera to focus in lowlight conditions. Is there anyway to help the camera focus in low light environments?

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have a wedding reception to attend in a couple of weeks and am worried that the camera will be useless.

I have a DX4330 myself and have had my share of low light focusing problems too. But I took one wedding reception with it and focusing came out ok. It was blurriness in pictures without flash that caused more trouble. But that is solved with a tripod because it was lack of a steady enough hand for the long exposures.

You could try taking some pictures at an environment similar to what you could expect in the wedding reception to experiment and work around the limitations of the camera. This is the beauty of digital photography. I have experimented quite a bit with this camera and have got very good results with it in low light situations.

Luis,

Thanks for your response. I am definitely a novice in the art of photography but I think I have a pretty good idea of the mechanics behind how the digital camera works. Let me know if I am correct.

The DX4330 has the LED next to the optical viewfinder. When taking a picture the "trigger button" should be depressed halfway to allow the camera to focus. When the LED turns green that indicates the camera has focused. In lowlight situations I cannot get the focus light to go green...it just flashes red indicating the camera is not focusing.

If a picture is taken with the flashing red LED they tend to turn out very blurry. Is this because the camera uses a longer exposure when not focused? If this is the case any movement by my hand while the exposure is open will cause the picture to blur.

Do you have any suggestions for getting the camera to focus (the LED to go green) in lowlight conditions? I plan on experimenting with it this evening.

Thanks for your help.

To tell you the truth, I never pay much attention to the status LED. I might be mistaken but it turns red only when there is a condition that does not allow the camera to take a picture like a battery about to die or a full memory card. Otherwise it will be orange or green.

The longer exposures were due to the low light, not the focusing problem.

One suggestion. If your subject is not very close you can switch the camera to "Landscape" mode which fixes the focus to infinity. I have used this setting at various distances with good results. You might need to turn on the flash manually (auto or fill flash) because landscape mode forces the flash off.

Well, the above was one. But you will probably not get a green light in low light conditions because if I am not mistaken the orange light is related to the flash (flashing means charging, I believe, steady means flash is ready, I think).