i started out with a camera that is similar to yours (point-and-shoot designed for the college girls who wanna take pics of themselves at parties lol) and just got a Canon Rebel XT, so i understand your pain with the lower end camera. basically, i have found that for action shots, such as a car driving by you, the best way to do it is to get the car (or other moving object, like an athlete or anything moving, really) in the view finder and try and ‘follow’ it with the camera, keeping it in the same place in the viewfinder, then just take the picture. it should result in something like this, where the object appears to be clear, but the background is blurred:
to the best of my knowledge, thats about as good as its gonna get with a basic point-and-shoot camera because you can’t adjust the shutter speed.
i dont think any of the settings that you suggested above will affect the shutter speed, but if they do, other settings will probably be changed and your picture will still come out looking like crap. the white balance wont really affect the blurriness of action shots, so i wouldnt even go there. most point-and-shoot camera have something that automatically determines the white balance and they usually work pretty good. again, the white balance probably will not have much to do with the blurriness of action shots. the exposure on the other hand, will. the longer the exposure, the more blurred your shot is going to be. for example, if your shooting a runner going past you, a longer exposure will blur the runner giving it the ‘woosh’ effect. you also have to be careful with the exposure because the longer it is, the brighter the picture turns out. if your ‘point-and-shoot’ is like mine, then it doesnt really give you much room to adjust the exposure and the aperture independently of each other, so thats not really gonna help much.
ive heard a lot of people say ‘its the photographer, not the camera’ that makes great pictures, and while i totally agree with this, there are limits to cameras. you’re not going to get the adjust ability in a $200 camera as you would in a $800 camera, and theres only so much you can do with the $200 camera. if you’re really serious about your photography, i would maybe consider getting into a camera and some lenses that are going to be better suited for your needs.
im still learning a lot about photography, but from my experiences so far, thats about the best i can offer. i could also be totally wrong with what i just said lol but hopefully it helps you out a little.
