A picture tells a thousand words

I'm finding a difficulty with photographing the prototypes. I'm not the world's best photographer by any means, and even after spending hours trying to get it right, I'm still getting mixed results, as you can see:





It's mainly getting enough light that you can see the crane rather than just a glow of light, but without it being blurry or grainy. I vaguely remember ISO and stuff like that from my photography course, which is helping a little, but I'm sure the pictures could be better. This is why I discounted photography as a Light Night proposal!

And just to prove my non-photographer credentials, here's my "studio" - my wardrobe. See the clothes horse/air dryer thing? That's what I rest the camera on to keep it steady.



So can anyone suggest hints and tips, that don't involve shelling out thousands on new cameras and such?