I've got a Canon 400D and haven't mastered the brightness of the christmas tree lights. when i take a photo of our tree, i usually just get brightness/blur from the lights. any suggestions?
Taking pictures of a Christmas tree with its bright lights can be kind of tough. On the one hand, you are probably taking pictures in a generally low light situation. On the other hand, the Christmas lights are relatively bright. So your camera sees 2 extremes of brightness.
The camera has to decide whether to make the low light scene brighter, or whether to tone down the photo because of the bright lights. Likely, the camera decided to make the scene brighter, and it probably did this by using a slower shutter speed. Using slower shutter speeds lets more light into the camera. However, slower shutter speeds means that there's a lot more chance for motion blur, especially when handholding the camera.
For example, let's say the camera decides to use a shutter speed of 1 second (or maybe even 1/2 second). There is no way any photographer can hold a camera completely still for 1 second. I can probably hold the camera still for 1/60 of a second, and on a good day may be as slow as 1/30 of a second. However any slower than that, my photos for sure will show blurriness from camera shake. That's probably why you're seeing streaks of lights or blurriness from your Christmas tree photos. And that's why previous posters above have suggested that you use a tripod or place your camera on a steady surface or table.
Here are some other things you can try to do. Try increasing ISO of your camera. This will make your camera sensor more sensitive to light, allowing you to use faster shutter speeds. If your living room has lights with a dimming switch, maybe you can turn on the lights just a little bit in the living room so that the camera sees a slightly brighter scene, and will use a slightly faster shutter speed. (Of course, if you turn the lights up all the way in the living room, you'll ruin the warm Christmas lights feeling in your photo)
Taking pictures of a Christmas tree with its Christmas lights is tough but not impossible. Just remember your basics of photography: shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, and how these 3 components of the "exposure triangle" interact with each other to make a correctly-exposed photograph.
