Blurred photos with flash and landscape mode with V610

I get blurred photos (red hand) on flash photos, landscape (infinity focus) photos, and typical photos in ambient daylight. Pictures in bright sunglight and distant zoom typically are crisp and non-blurry (green hand). Is this unique to my particular camera, or have others found this too? I've tried the Scene selection, and played with exposure settings with little change in result.

Well, you need to understand that the flash for a point and shoot like the V610 isn't really designed for anything other than close up portraits and small group shots. This is due to it's limited range of about 6-10 feet. Outside of that,the flash dissipates tremendously, leaving you with either an unexposed shot or a blurry image. Simply the nature of the point and shoot beast.

It is quite true that any low light conditions are a challenge to digital point and shoot cameras. It sounds like you are only having the blurred shots when your camera is warning you of that possibility with the red hand sign and all the green hand sign pics are clear. However, if your close up (5 feet and less) flash shots are blurry I would take the camera in for a check up especially if it is still under warranty as it may not be functioning up to specifications.
Larry

Larry has a thought there, but before sending it in for repair (if your warranty is expired an estimate can average more than the what the camera is really worth), I would tryresetting the camera. This is a fairly easy procedure which involves either going into your setup menu and choosing "reset," holding down the menu key for 5 seconds, or, removing the batteries for a few minutes. It may be that the firmware loading got corrupted and the camera just needs to be "rebooted," which is something that turning it on/off won't accomplish. But after which, you should have the camera reset to factory default settings.

Then, go to Kodak's website and look for firmware updates. Download and install them.

I'd also make sure you're prefocusing and panning with the action while shooting. It may be that you're suffering from camera shake due to shutter lag. You push the shutter, it may take anywhere from 0.235 - 0.703 sec for the camera to take the picture. Add that to the actual shutter time in low light conditions and you have quite a long time to wait. You move during that time and you have a blurry image.

The blur seems happens whether I hold the camera by hand, or use a tripod with a delayed shutter, and mostly in "other than bright sun", or on "no zoom" landscapes. My only thought is that sometimes there's too much in the viewfinder for it to process fully. I'll try the reset option - it seems like a good first step.

Well the blur can obviously occur via camera shake. But you can eliminate much of it by prefocusing, instead of trying to shoot on the fly. But on the tripod, that's a puzzler. Unless the camera is focus on a point in the background, rather than where you want it to. This can happen in certain lighting conditions.

Don't forget the firmware update. There may be one that addresses the issue.

I'm already running the current firmware version according to the Kodak website. I did remove the battery, waited a while, and reinstalled it, but there seemed no apparent change. I started doing some experimentation. What I found is that the the blurry photos seemed to consistently occur when my zoom lens was set to the widest field, ie zoomed fully out. When I zoom in one or two stops (about 25% of the total available optical zoom) the prevalence of blurry photos tends to disappear. The more I zoom in, hte more likely the picture comes in clear with a "green hand". This was true for bright daylight, flash, and low light situations. A tripod obviously helped with low light and flash, but I believe the defining issue has to do with the zoom position. In all cases, the prefocus zone seemed to operate properly by selecting the appropriate item. When the prefocus didn't kick-in, the pictures were far more blurry.

My camera was purchased in June of 2006, well over a year ago, so I don't think its still covered by any warranty. I'm getting the sense that this is a fluke with my processor and hardware.