African Violets and Gesneriads: Somebody Turn On A Light Please!, 1 by Xeramtheum

Xeramtheum wrote:
First you want to take your camera off of Automatic A and set it to P - Program Auto Mode which allows you to make some adjustments.

For those of you who have and can use picture editing programs that allow you to crop and resize pictures, you’ll want to set your camera to the highest pixel settings. With my camera it creates about a 20 meg picture at it’s highest setting. For those of you who don’t and have to upload pictures directly to the internet, probably what the default is when you first got your camera is best.

White Balance .. what that does is adjust the color tones to the light conditions .. everyone should have a setting on their camera that has a list like incandescent, cloudy, fluorescent, daylight etc. Found under Menu

So if you are taking a picture of a plant that is being lighted by a regular light bulb then you want to choose incandescent.

Light Meter .. Most cameras have a setting that you can choose the way the camera sees the light. Sony has Spot, Center and Multi. Spot adjust exposure for what is directly in front of the lens. This will usually cause the background to be lighter than normal but the flower you are shooting will have detail instead of being muddy or washed out. Center adjusts for a wider range average and Multi adjusts for all the light and takes an average. I usually use the Spot for extreme close-ups and Center for shooting a whole plant or groups of plants. Found under Menu

EV – Exposure Value .. This is a great feature found on most cameras but usually not on ones that are totally automatic. When in this mode, you can increase or decrease the amount of light. So if what you are shooting looks particularly dark or light you can adjust the amount of light using this feature. Usually found as a button on the camera and not in the Menu.

Exposure Bracketing Most adjustable cameras should have this. In this setting what it does is take 3 pictures of the same thing with each picture exposed a bit differently using the EV. You can see the differences in the picture below. I always use this setting no matter what I'm shooting. You cannot use it with flash for obvious reasons.

Start with any one of the 4 described above and become comfortable changing the settings then move on to another.