Hi Brian, all,
A key thing to remember is that you would need a means to hold your camera stable during a long exposure. Night shots with flash require the shutter to be open for many seconds, while folks run around popping flashes, lumidynes, or whatever. You can sometimes hand-hold a camera for "long" exposures such as 1/15th of a second....but nobody can hold one steady for 10 seconds. That usually means you need a tripod of some sort, and a means to trigger the shutter on command without jarring the camera in the process.
Night shots can absolutely be done with a point and shoot camera, but you need to know how to operate all of the controls on your camera, and you need to know that stuff before the shoot begins. The odds that someone there will know your particular camera are pretty slim. There are a million point and shoot models out there.
As we say in the aviation business....RTFM. Read the FLIGHT Manual.
/Kevin
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/2015 05:26PM by KevinM.