If I may use this single reply to George's post for a general reply to the thread: many thanks to all who have taken the time to reply - there are certainly enough suggestions for me to experiment with.

My current thoughts (on re-reading the manual in view of the responses on this thread) are to try out the EV compensation, in combination with other settings available in Program mode and perhaps to try out the Green mode more. I had considered the bright sky in my photos, and various tests showed that that wasn't the problem (ie the images were dark even in uniform light with scenes containing little or no sky).

In reply to George's points: what I was trying to say is that I am unwilling to have to set a number of options each time I want to take an ordinary outdoor shot in decent light, but I am more than happy to experiment in order to get the required settings, providing I can save and recall them easily. In fact, I am now looking forward to experimenting, the last time I did this was 30+ years ago (with a Yashica Minister-D, if anyone's interested) and I do remember some basics, but as I said I do not claim to be a serious photographer.

Incidentally, is it not true that whenever we buy a piece of high-tec equipment nowadays we often pay for features we do not use (on TVs, watches, DVDs, PCs etc)? I know where you're coming from, but I bought the A20 mainly for brand quality; compact design; 10Mp and, well yes, ease-of-use. Perhaps the choice of camera was a mistake for the last category.

Regards,
Colin

Hello,

I've recently bought an Optio A20 and very nice it is too - except that most outdoor shots appear underexposed, even when taken in good light. Even I can correct the images on my PC by using MS Photoshop editor, but if I don't do this they appear too dark (when displayed on TV or computer monitor). It is a problem for me, because I like to view and share the photos via TV, and this makes having to post-process the images impracticable.

Almost always, I use the "Auto Picture" mode. I would like to experiment with the AE Metering option - but I find the modes in which this option is available a bit too confusing and time-consuming to use.

As you can probably tell, I am not a "serious" photographer and I would appreciate any tips on how/if this is correctable using options that, once configured, can be re-used easily without having to go into various menus every time I switch on the camera. Or perhaps it could be a fault with the particular camera that I have?

Regards,
Colin