You are correct, I was losing sight of that point. But how do they get the pictures out of focus? By focusing them closer than infinity, or shaking the camera? I'd think it would be a simple matter to just set the thing on "infinity" and then shoot.
In all likelihood it was a simple point-and-shoot digital camera. Most of them autofocus with enough light. At night like that, they have a hard time focusing properly and usually end up focused halfway from as close as it can go to infinity since the autofocus mechanism can't find a focus point. I wish the camera designers would make them default to an infinity focus, but they don't and most of them default to a halfway focus instead.