[wonderbar1uk]

need some help if anyone can ,had the above a year or so now but not used it loads<to busy work ,work> take it on holiday and daytime photos are great ,action shots in water ,but when it comes to indoors at night such as in bars using the lcd screen to view the photo before i take it the image is hardly viewable ,very dark and sometimes i shoot in the hope that it gets the shot .total novice but need to learn more and hope to before hols in 4 weeks,where am i going wrong
ps . i normally use auto

[Paul Shirley]

Lets get the obvious things out of the way.

Auto mode restricts the range of settings available, in difficult situations it will let you down as you've discovered. To unlock the full capabilities you'll need to use one of the manual or semi manual modes.

You can set a higher ISO which will help with the LCD brightness, at the cost of more noise in the picture. Dropping to the lowest F value will help, just be aware of the tighter depth of field, best for portraits, not so good for crowds. I've noticed my Z6 gains up substantially with the flash popped up, don't be afraid of using the flash, though its pretty low power on the Z series.

Use a tripod to allow longer exposures, pocket tripods are cheap and small enough to carry everywhere - mine fits neatly in a jeans pocket.

[wonderbar1uk]

thanks paul , be interesting if someone is actually using a z3 themselves,the lcd screen is supposedly auto adjusting to the light ,but mine is very dark ,im gonna use it more in indoor night conditions before i go away ,if i overcome this problem i would be happy because i have had some good photos otherwise,but if there anyone out there using a z3 please get back to me,cheers