I wish cameras went to ISO 6 for beach

Depends on what you want. The Professional mid frame camera's all used to have the CCD sensor, because they most of the time were used in studio environment. The ISO of the sensors is low, but with enough light there is o problem. But now you see the CMOS sensors are so good, the mid frame cameras now move to the CMOS. CCD is good till 100 ISO. CMOS now can work at 1600 and 3200 ISO and still give superb quality.
So for speed (Canon 1D xx and Nikon D4S) they use CMOS and shoot brilliant pictures even in bad light conditions. When you have time (in a studio) and enough light use CCD like Phase One and Hasselblad.
Goto DxOMark.com to see what camera's give the sharpest pictures with the greatest dynamic range. You would think the Phase One with the biggest sensor, but till now it is the Nikon D810, Nikon D800E second and then the Sony A7R. position 8 is the first CCD a Phase one. In the top 10, 3 times Sony, 6 times Nikon, all CMOS and only one CCD from Phase one.
Really interested in camera performance? visit Camera Sensor Ratings by DxOMark and
Camera Reviews Previews

You have not stated which model camera body you have so I can only give you general Nikon information. There is a range over which the automatic settings will work for each camera. In addition, Nikon bodies have multiple sensitivity ranges. On the D90 for example, go into the "Shooting Menu" and open the "ISO sensitivity settings." You will see "maximum sensitivity" and "minimum shutter speed" menus along with the "ISO sensitivity auto control" options. Turn off the auto control option and manually set the maximum (ISO) sensitivity and minimum shutter speed. Also, the Shooting Menu also has "High ISO NR" settings that can be used to accommodate most lighting situations. You need to look in your camera's manual for all the details. The Nikon website has manuals available for all the Nikon products.

Sound like a problem with the CCD Image sensor go to bad. In both cases this isn't a job that you could solve yourself; this wrong include distorted images or abnormal colors, scratchy purple lines, blank or black pictures, and/or black videos with good sound being recorded on the camera's flash card.

I suggest check THIS LINK for additional details in this previous solutions for an Defective CCD (Charge Coupled Device) and next contact your Canon service. I strongly suggest (taking into consideration the age of your camera) to evaluate the cost of repair versus the cost of a new camera with similar features, before making a final desicion.

Hope this helps.

Hi,

The flash in the Camera can be enabled to Flash Forced ON by pressing the Up Arrow control button on the Camera. Press the button continuously to select the desired settings.
Make sure that the Camera Mode (REC MODE) is not set to Burst or Multi Burst.
Flash will not work when the Camera is set to ISO High Sensitivity mode or Twilight mode in the Scene Selection.
The flash will not work in Movie Mode also.
When using the Landscape, snow or Beach mode, set the Scene Selection to Flash Forced On.

This should resolve the issue.

Thanks for using FixYa.
We wish you a Happy Holiday Season!!

The d90 takes excellent pics, but you need to understand the settings. White balance determines the accuracy of the color by setting what the camera sees as whit compared to what you do. Then you need to set the ISO, which is how sensitive it is to light. The higher the number, the more sensitive. In super bright situations you may need to go as low as 200, 800 in lowlight. 400 is a good average, 100 is rarely used. then your aperature value (a/f) this determines how much light the camera actually lets in, not to be confused with the sensitivity (ISO) which is specifically how sensitive the film is (not that you have any). Then is the shutter speed, which is how long the camera exposes the film when you hit the button-for fast moving objects, you want the shutter to open and close really fast so it doesn't blur;if it stays open too long it will capture the object in motion-if someone is running and you have a slow speed, the image could be the runner taking three steps as opposed to a still picture. To start.your setting when you take a pic, look at how much light you have. For indoors with no lights on during the day or outside cloudy, ISO 400. In at night with bright lights or outside sunny day, ISO 800. Then determine the speed of your object. A good standard for slow objects is 1/20-1/60. Set that, then set your aperature (f value) so the picture looks at the right brightness. If you adjust the aperature all the way and still need more or less light, adjust the shutter. Then cycle through your white balance options to make sure your color looks right and take a picture. If it comes out really grainy, your light settings were not right, you should pay attention to your ISO and aperature settings.

It is the Film speed to measure of a photographic film’s sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, the most recent being the ISO system. Relatively insensitive film, with a correspondingly lower speed index requires more exposure to light to produce the same image density as a more sensitive film, and is thus commonly termed a slow film. Highly sensitive films are correspondingly termed fast films.

ISO numbers usually double up, and each step gives one more stop of light. Common numbers are: 50 – 100 – 160 – 200 – 400 – 800 – 1600 and higher.

Take a look at these links for some good explanations of what ISO is in phtography.

http://www.all-things-photography.com/iso.html
http://www.photography-tips.co.uk/?p=35
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_speed
http://www.ophrysphotography.co.uk/pages/highiso.htm
http://www.videojug.com/film/digital-photography-tips-iso-and-light-settings

Two possibilities related to the amount of light reaching your camera sensor.

The sensitivity ISO is set too low, perhaps 200... set it higher, like 800 or 1600 ISO
[Menu]
[Sensitivity]


Your "resolution" may be set too low, maybe 3 Megapixels. Set the resolution to at least 6 megapixels.

When you say in low light, I take it you mean when on a high ISO setting. The S3Pro does have some limitations in this regard. One reviewer stated:

"As expected, our test images are clean and relatively noise free from ISO 100 through ISO 800. At ISO 1600, noise has a significant impact on images. To keep it in check, Fujifilm applies relatively heavy detail-smearing noise reduction to JPEGs. You can bypass this by shooting raw, but then your images will be fairly noisy. All in all, we'd rate the S3 Pro's high-ISO image quality to be middle-of-the-pack among current dSLRs."

I guess that probably answers your question!

Feel free to get back to me.

Please more explanation - 'The ISO'
The iso related to image quality- you appear to have it set to low quality setting which gives the maximum number of images but of low resolution. Reset it to HQ or SHQ for best results.
Check your manual re how to do this.
The is usually a more comprehensive manual of the software CD in PDF format