Taking pics with white in it and everything else comes out too dark

[KOR]

When I am takin gpics of someone wearing white, it's like the flash obsorbs the flash. Everything around it comes out dark,

I have the Powershot SD-900 digital elph. Someone please help.

[Ronald S. Jr.]

Flashes on point and shoot cameras have an extremely short effective range. That doesn't help at all with exposing a whole shot properly.

Secondly, when you have someone wearing white right as the main subject, your camera is going to try and make that white look like 18% grey. Unfortunately, when it brings down this exposure, it darkens the background as well. I know some of the SD series have manual exposure compensation...perhaps you could check, and turn that to the positive side to intentially "overexpose" the shot. Should turn out just right.

[jra]

The white is throwing off the flash metering. Dial in some positive Flash exposure compensation and you should be able to brighten your pics.

[KOR]

Flashes on point and shoot cameras have an extremely short effective range. That doesn't help at all with exposing a whole shot properly.

Secondly, when you have someone wearing white right as the main subject, your camera is going to try and make that white look like 18% grey. Unfortunately, when it brings down this exposure, it darkens the background as well. I know some of the SD series have manual exposure compensation...perhaps you could check, and turn that to the positive side to intentially "overexpose" the shot. Should turn out just right.
I'm sorry, I'm good at takin gpics but

"turn that to the positive side to intentially "overexpose" the shot"
&
"Dial in some positive Flash exposure compensation"................I don't know what all that means. lol Sorry for the trouble and thanks.

[Jon]

On the SD600, and I'm assuming similar on the SD900, it's called "Flash Exposure Lock". Aim the camera at something other than the white part of your subject, turn the flash on (press the flash button until you see "Flash On" symbol), press the shutter part-way and press the "ISO" button. Keep the shuter button partly depressed and recompose to take your picture.