tristaw. wrote:
The action mode blurs everything. ... Outside scenes are gorgeous, portrait scenes are amazing. But bunny pictures?? always blur. It's frustrating.
I'm not a real fan of "modes" - too old-fashioned, I guess. I prefer to set the parameters (exposure or aperture) as I need, rather than have the camera try to apply some sort of averaging thing based on what it thinks the picture should be. For pictures of bunnies, I would choose the highest shutter speed I could get, given the maximum aperture of the lens and the ISO of the sensor. There's a "High ISO Auto" function on the SP600 (in the shooting function menu) which will cause the camera to choose a higher ISO (more sensitive sensor) setting.
I'm looking at the manual for the Olympus SP600-UZ, and it kind of confirms my previous impressions. I just don't think like Olympus.
Typically for point-n-shoots, they offer lots of "shooting modes", but don't explain what they do in any detail. I went through the manual from cover to cover, and there's nothing explaining what the camera actually does in any of the modes.
The Digital Photography School website has a
page explaining modes in general. It's not specific to Olympus, but should help a bit.
There appears to be a "PET" mode in the SP600, which would seem to be what you'd want (bunnies aren't pets, of course, they're superior beings which keep humans as slaves, but it should be close). To find that, you need to go into "SCN" shooting mode, and select "PET" from the sub-menu and hit "OK".
To use the PET mode, you put the focus mark on the subject and push the OK button. Then the camera tracks the subject and keeps it in focus.
There's also a "sport" mode - I'm not sure what the difference between pets and sports are, photographically - maybe sports focuses at a distance to speed up performance? I can't tell. Give it a try and see if it works any better than PET.
By the way, I'd be sure that you have Digital Zoom and Fine Zoom on Shooting Menu 1 set to "OFF" - stick with optical zoom. Digital Zoom is smoke-and-mirrors and can only hurt your image quality.