Because of low shutter speed. You need to discover the best settings for the camera. Don't expect oh I pick this mode, then it will do. It requires some amount of exposure triangle knowledge.

For example, Firework mode will let the shutter speed to go 1 second to create light trail. Night portrait mode allows the shutter speed to be as slow as 1/5 seconds to keep the ISO low. Low shutter speed is prone to cause handshake. Auto mode extends the ISO range to 6400 in order to get higher shutter speed and thus handshake is reduced. Or eventually, set to Manual mode without any scene. Then you can manually tune down the ISO to keep the image low noise with the increment of chance of picture getting shake. Sony didn't overly denoise the image (which is pretty much found in other phones like iphone during low light). Aggressive denoise will cause lost in details and watercolour effect. So Sony left some headroom for post-processing - either you like the current state or denoise it by yourself.

For the focus/sharp issue, there is a limitation on the minimum focus range, bu Z1 is quite close in term of that. Did you set the resolution to 8MP? 8MP will give you an illusion of the image is "sharp". Any picture sample on that? Therefore, just trial and error. You can find pretty much discussions on such matter via Google.

This post has been edited by kingkingyyk: Apr 1 2014, 09:41 AM