Why are my pictures so shitty?

[Phil McAvity]

Originally Posted by Doady

It might have been too dark inside your house. Certainly, it would have been too dark outside at night.

Darker conditions means less light, when there is less light the camera requires larger aperture (smaller F-stop) and higher ISO. When camera reaches the aperture and ISO limit, then it needs to reduce the shutter speed, and when the shutter speed is too slow then the camera will start to capture movement, including the movement of the camera caused by the shaking of your hands, and that is what causes blur.

Even my $3000 camera I have to put on a tripod at night for good image quality, especially when I zoom in. When you zoom it, the effect of camera shake is magnified and even higher shutter speeds are required.

As SIGSEGV said, posting the photos would give us EXIF info including the shutter speed which would confirm that is the problem. But based on what you describe, I think it is safe to say the shutter speed is too low.

Your Sony camera has a Night scene mode which might help shooting handheld in extremely low light conditions. But for better results, use the Manual (M) mode, set the F-number to the lowest F-number possible (e.g. F3.0), and try not to zoom in too much. For best results and full use of zoom, you will need to set the camera on a tripod, or rest it on a railing or table or some other surface, to keep the camera as still as possible while shooting.

In dark conditions, you need to increase the shutter speed with higher ISO and lower F-number. If you cannot increase shutter speed enough, then you need to find ways to keep the camera still. And increasing shutter speed means 1/20th of a second, then 1/30, then 1/60 and so on. Reducing shutter speed would mean 1/10th of a second, then 1/5, then 1/2 then 1 second, and so on.

A photo at F5.6 and ISO 100 requiring shutter speed of 6 seconds. With F2.8 and ISO 400, the shutter speed would increase to 1/3 second, more handholdable than 6 seconds, but maybe still not enough.

Thanks for all that info

The weird thing is, i've owned a number of digital cameras over the years and as this one is the newest I figured it would take the best pictures but it takes the worst. I've taken tons of blurry pics over the years as i'm always using the zoom but the pictures i've taken with this camera aren't blurry due to zoom and shaking the camera they're just really low resolution, like inexplicably low res. I have two tripods as well (both a tabletop and a full-sized) which I will have to start using again as well as going into the settings to make the adjustments you suggested

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Phil McAvity

Unbeknownst to you, you just proved my point with your combination of hostility, feigned humility and then smugness

[harryc]

Quick suggestion - try first on full-auto mode in sunlight.

To confirm that your shots are coming in at a lower res compare the files sizes to some of your (good) old shots.

If it is happening on 2 different cameras then the issue may be how your are downloading the photos, open the chip in file explorer and see if the image-files there are the same size as when they are on your PC.