Question on taking photos in low lighting....

[brita10]

I want to take pictures in low lighting without using the flash ( I want to see the lighting there already is, like this)

But in low lighting my camera (Nikon D80) always takes the picture very slow (clicks twice) and makes it blurry.

Do I need to learn the manual functions on my camera to do this?

[autofocus]

You probably need to invest in some fast glass Brita...F/1.4, F/1.8, or F/2.8 at a mimimum. You can get a 50mm, F/1.8 from Nikon that won't break the bank

[kencaleno]

This was made at 1250 ISO,using kit lens:

[SandeeWig]

Originally Posted by brita10

I want to take pictures in low lighting without using the flash...
Do I need to learn the manual functions on my camera to do this?

Yes. You need to be able to control the shutter, aperture and ISO, and the only way to control all three is in M mode. You are getting blur because your SS is so slow to compensate for the lack of light. In other words the shutter opens and closes slowly to allow as much light in as necessary for good exposure. This only works if your subject is standing still (not likely if you're photographing people).

So my advice is to learn the exposure triangle and play with the controls until you are able to set a fast enough shutter to avoid as much motion blur as possible (i.e. in your example image, his left hand is blurry). Most likely this will mean high ISO and wide aperture (small f-number). The higher the ISO, the more noise you will introduce into the image also, which can reduce the overall sharpness, but sometimes that's the compromise you make to get the shot.

Hope this helps!