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Oregon said:
I couldn't find the mushroom photo thread so here it is.

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Nice one. It's a pity I don't have any recent pics right now, but let's get this topic started with some finds of last fall...

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Tip-When using a digital camera in low light situations with no flash it is best to try and not use the zoom or digital/zoom as these settings seem to let less light into the cam making blurry/out of focus pics.

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There's certainly some truth in this:

1. Zoomed out, most lenses are able to capture more light than fully zoomed in. This is reflected by the diaphragm specs of the lens, which is typically something like f/2.8-f/4.5, which indicates that the maximum diaphragm opening on the 'wide end' (fully zoomed out) is f/2.8, while fully zoomed in, it's only f/4.5, forcing you (or the camera) to choose a longer exposure time, increasing chances of motion blur.

2. Zoomed out (with a large angle of view), the tremor of your hands is proportionally smaller, leading to less motion blur than the same tremor would cause while fully zoomed in. The rule of thumb photographers use for determining the longest possible hand-held exposure whil using a lens with a certain focal lenght, would be 1/(focal length). So when using a 28mm lens (wide-angle), typically you'd avoid shooting at exposeres longer than about 1/30s (which is quite long). But if you're using a 200mm lens (or you zoom in on your camera to a 35-mm equivalent of 200mm), you should avoid opening the shutter for longer than about 1/200s. Of course, this is only a rule of thumb. Many photographers can consistently produce sharp images on slower speeds due to a firm grip and a lot of practise.

So Oregon is definitely right: if you're shooting in low light circuimstances and you want to avoid using your camera's flash, zoom out as far as possible in order to get sharp images.

Now bring on the bl**dy pics!