Hey David - I've had a quick 10 minute read of this thread and its really interesting.
I am another mainly auto user. Although since I got my new camera and during my holiday in Crete I did try to use non auto settings - I found using the night setting hard as often it was very blurry.
EDIT - Having looked at my camera - there is a manual setting but I've never used that - I've used the settings like party, landscape, beach, nighttime, sunset etc, which I guess changes the settings a bit.
I guess if I was taking photos of skimble I should generally put it on sport - I wonder how i take black and white photos?
One other problem I have is I can never take a good photo of Skimble - he either moves or closes his eyes - I guess this has to sdo with the shutter speed.
I love black and white photos but I'm not sure I can do it on my camera.
My camera is a Fujifilm Finepix F20 LE
My photos are not back on my laptop yet - once they are I'll post a few that I like and ones that have gone wrong and you can see what you think.
Hey Kelda!!
Is this your camera?
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2007_reviews/fuji_f20.htmlI looked it over a bit and it appears you have a very nice and capable camera. According to Steve, you can shoot B&W phogoraphs. You can access the B&W filter by pressing the blue "F" button on the back of your camera and then following this path: F Mode Menu ---> Finepix Color ---> Color Mode: B&W.
When photographing Skimble the cat, you should probably set your shutter speed to at least 1/250; 1/500 would be ideal. Animals and children have a tendancy to make sudden moves and setting a faster shutter speed will help "freeze" their actions. If the picture turns out too dark, try switiching on some lights inside the room, turning on your flash and setting it to low or mid burst (using a low burst will help to keep the animal from becoming startled by the sudden flash of light), or moving the cat to a different area with brighter lighting conditions. Opening up your aperture to a wider setting (f/2.0 - f/3.6) will allow more light to enter the camera, but you may lose some depth of field in the process. Using a higher ISO setting may also help, but I don't recommend anything above ISO 400 for indoor photos, otherwise you may end up with some unwanted image noise.
Do you have a "children and pets" scene mode in your camera? If so I would suggest giving it a try. If not, try the suggestions above and let me know how your skimble pictures turned out, okay?
Read through Steve's review of your camera. He does a very good job of explaining many of the camera's features and I'll be happy to help you in any way I can, Kelda.