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I am trying to take pictures of a high school play. Sometimes I get great pictures and others I get are blurry despite little to no movement on stage. Can anyone give me some pointers?
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Are you using an auto mode on the camera, or one of the manual modes (i.e. manual, aperture priority, shutter priority)? If it's in auto, you are probably getting a slower shutter speed than necessary due to poor lighting indoors. Even with IS, you will still need a reasonable shutter speed to eliminate camera shake.
I am not that familiar with the S3, but it probably does not give you any more than a 3-stop shutter speed advantage with IS engaged. If you are zoomed in at the S3's maximum focal length (432mm equivalent), using the reciprocal of focal length rule, without IS you would normally need at least 1/500 second shutter speed to eliminate camera shake blur (maybe more if you are unsteady). So, with the 3-stop advantage of IS, you would still need 1/60 second shutter speed to eliminate camera shake.
Try using either AV (aperture priority), TV (shutter priority) or manual mode. Make sure your shutter speed is at least 1/60 if you are zoomed in all the way. You will probably need to bump the ISO up substantially indoors. If the lighting is really poor, it may be impossible to get a wide enough aperture even with the ISO set at maximum. In this case, your only other options are using flash or going to a wider angle setting to reduce focal length, which would allow you to use a slower shutter speed.