Out of focus shots at night

The C770 uses an Autofocus TTL system (contrast detection) so day or night if you dont have good contrast it wont focus properly. You could try the camera in night mode on a tripod. This camera is just not good for low contrast/low light situations. If there is a small area of light in the scene/person try using spot autofocus. Finally this is an ultrazoom 10x camera. Back off on the zoom all the way. The more zoom you have the less light you are seeing/collecting. Its a fun camera but with limitations and you just have to get used to them. Good luck

First, check to see if you're in auto or program mode, as opposed to manual or possibly even aperture priority (if it supports it). Typically, auto or program mode sets your shutter speed to around 1/60th of a second, which is usually good enough to hand-hold a flash shot without blur. The camera should emit enough flash - within its range, of course - to get a good exposure. You typically won't get a good flash shot if your subject is more than 10-12 feet away. If you want, you should be able to go back and look at the way your camera was set for each shot with a program like Photoshop or Elements. That information is stored as "EXIF" data, and if you select a file in Photoshop CS' file manager for example, you should be able to see what the shutter speed was on any given shot. Let's suppose you look at some old, blurry night-shots - the EXIF data, that is - that should've turned out OK and your shutter speed and everything look fine. At that point, I'd try taking some flash photographs using a tripod at night which would eliminate camera-shake as a possible cause of the blurry shots. I suspect that the likely cause was your camera wasn't in the correct mode though and once you get that squared away, it'll be OK. Good luck!