What settings for night time photography?

[Ben10]

Hi guys,
Just bought a Samsung WB700 and trying it out at the moment. I'm going on holiday soon where I will be using the camera a lot in the day as well as at night for parades and shows.
Obviously there are 'auto settings' to take pictures depending on what the camera can sense, but I am after creating my own settings to take the best pictures as possible at night. The auto feature doesn't really give me good night photos.
What settings will I need to change in order to get the best night photos? I'm not clued up on cameras but I will be playing around with it and figure it out if you can help.
The night sett on the camera is the obvious one, but I'm guessing it's the longer exposure that is making all the photos blurry. I can't be setting up a tripod at a parade etc (going to disney world).
I have bought one of those little gorilla pods for the odd night photo on night mode but this isnt practical!
Any advice?

 

[JJ!]

Long exposure is fine for non moving objects. For anything handheld your going to have to raise the ISO and shoot at fairly quick shutter speeds to avoid any blur.

Has the camera got full manual controls? You can then experiment with a mixture of ISO, shutter speed and aperture to get the best results.

 

[Hixle]

The only way you're going to get a non-blury picture without a tripod will be to adjust the ISO really mate. Bumping this up will improve night time performance, but will sacrifice image quality. In other words, the photos won't be as blury, but may appear grainy.

Find the best balance between the steadiness of your hand and the appropriate ISO. Good luck!

 

[couzens]

as above really, I tend to shoot RAW at night, can adjust the White Balance in PS then.