A620 owners - What settings do you use in various situations?

[cloudeleven]

I am a new owner of an A620, and I have been trying out the camera for the past few days. I have noticed that the Auto setting works well in daylight outdoors and in bright light indoors, but not so well at night and in low light indoors. The pictures come out way too dark at night and in low light with the Auto setting, even with the flash on.

I think I could get off on a better foot if you could please answer these questions.
What settings on the A620 would you *typically* use in these situations?
1. Outdoors, nighttime, taking picture of a neon sign from distance of 30 feet
2. Outdoors, nighttime, taking picture of a skyline from a distance
3. Indoors, bright light, taking picture of a statue
4. Indoors, low light, taking picture of a hotel lobby

By "settings," I mean would you use Auto, landscape, night scene, etc modes, or would you use custom settings? And if you used custom settings, what would they be (shutter speed, aperture, etc)? How about flash?

Thanks for your help.

[Jon]

even with the flash onWell, it's trying to use the flash to expose the photo;turning th eflash off in dim conditions where the dim environment is what you're trying to photograph will help. BUT you're going to need a tripod or other rigid camera support because you'll have a long exposure, with opportunities for camera shake. As for situations, you picked sme dillies.

Specifically:
1) if your goal is the sign, never mind the surroundings, either M at 1/30 and wide open or Tv 1/30 or so at ISO 100. Then play with the settings until you get just what you want. If you want the sign and the surroundings, aim the camera just below the sign, meter there and use that setting, recomposing to where you want. This will let the camera expose for the surroundings, although the sign may burn out some.

2) Trying for a silhouette,or for the foreground colours? silhouette - meter for the sky; foreground, meter for the foreground.

3) zoom inon the stature and take a meter reading, then set that into the camera and recompose.

4) try to keep lights out of the area while you're metering (see "statue" example), use those settings, and recompose.

You may be ready for a book on proper exposure. One that's widely recommended here is Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure.