I own a TZ1 and am having a terrible time taking indoor low light pictures. They are all dark. Can someone who owns this camera please help?!?

I recently got a TZ1 and have occasionally seen low-light problems. Here are some suggestions:

First, if you're in a low-light situation and have the sensitivity set to "auto", re-set it to iso 400 or 800. The "auto" setting tops out at iso 200 and this is inadequate for low-light situations. Notice that I didn't recommend the "high sensitivity" scene mode, which allows the camera to select either iso 800 or 1600. This is because I personally don't like the performance at 1600 so wouldn't recommend it, and prefer to take it out of the equation. Also, note that you ought to re-set the iso to 400-800 even if you are using the flash. The flash will only go out to 10-12 feet in "auto" (remember, that setting tops out at iso 200), but can go out to 15+ feet at iso 800. This can make a real difference. Also along these same lines, consider exclusively using the camera at its wide angle setting, rather than zooming out to telephoto. Like most cameras these days, the max aperture on this camera's lense varies as you zoom out. It's best low-light performance will come when it is at it's widest angle setting, where the aperture is f/2.8.

Second, and this is assuming that you are not using the flash, be aware that the light meter in the TZ1 seems to be easily fooled by bright light sources anywhere in the frame. The TZ1 has three metering options: heavily center-weighted (the default), plain center-weighted, and spot. I've tried to take indoor night pictures using the heavily center-weighted meter pattern where there was a lamp or television off to the side, and that extra light managed to cause severe under-exposure for my pictures. The solution was to instead set the light meter to spot metering, which gave me very nicely exposed pictures. If you routinely "pre-focus" your pictures, then you will not have any problems using the spot meter. Just "pre-focus" like you would normally do, and the camera will simultaneously spot meter on whatever you're pointed at. Both focus and meter settings will be locked into the computer as long as you hold the shutter release button down halfway.

Third, and this is assuming that you are in extreme low-light conditions but still do not want to use the flash, consider setting the max exposure to one second (I think the default is 1/8 second). If the camera meter looks over a scene and thinks it needs a really long exposure, say 1/2 second, but you've got the camera set to max out at 1/8 second, well, the camera is not going to override your setting, so it'll give you the 1/8 second exposure, even though the resulting picture will be dark. Of course, if you need exposures this long, you might want to consider using a tripod (even though the TZ1's image stabilizing is pretty good).

Hope this is helpful.