tursiops, I'm not sure if you meant me or original poster, but I just messed around with my camera again, looking in the Menu to see if I could find Quick Shot and turn that off. Amazingly, I found that and turned it off, turned Image stabilizer on, and voila! My pictures of my son's tiny toy motorcycle on the kitchen counter look much better! What was worrying me was that even when I would push the shutter button half way, it wouldn't adjust the focus at all. Now I can hear it changing the focus and the lighting looks way better. I had pretty much everything set to auto, but maybe that tiny change of turning quick shot off, image stabilize on made enough difference. Before finding those in the menu options, I took a couple photos with the timer, setting the camera on the counter and taking a picture, just to make sure it wasn't me being shaky but even then it was either focusing on anything in the background or just all around blurry. My pictures are too big to post an example but it seems like I might have found the problem anyway.