Nikon D3100 picture quality?

Why does my Nikon D3100 have better video quality over picture quality, even on the same settings? Am I doing something wrong?

My guess is you are shooting in the "auto" mode and the camera is raising the ISO setting because you are shooting in low light (indoors) conditions.

You need to pick your ISO, shutter speed and lens aperture if you want the highest quality still images

Here is how you do that.

http://camerasim.com/camera-simulator/

Ace has a very good point what settings are you using.

Once I had my camera stuck in ISO 1600. And it was sunny out.ouch.

Personally I shoot most of the time apperture mode. I keep the ISO low and use all trick of the book like leaning against a wall, using a tripod, setting my camera on a table. To get motion free images. But higher ISO's don't have to be bad.modern DSLR's like the D3100 can offer quite some decent high iso performance. So really you self have to work out how far you want to go.

I got an older 2008 model DSLR and.well ISO 100-400 very usable. 800.mmm, 1600 please no!

But really with how good noise reduction can be a D3100 might have some very nice ISO 3200 to offer.

Just use a tripod and try out every ISO you have in the same shot and go pixel peep. You probably will see some noise and/or smudging. That is natural but then pull back and you see that the good pixels will hide the noisy ones. You can print out an ISO 3200 picture. As long as you don't print it out to big.

Most probably. At Auto mode, your dSLR is nothing more than fancy point-and-shoot. At least play with EV. Raise to add more light, lower to darken.