S3 IS problem with bright colors

Hello. I purchased an S3 this winter and have just now really used it outdoors. I'm having a little trouble with bright colors on a sunny day. They seem to look overexposed and blurred. For instance, my wife was taking pictures of her mother's tulips (in auto mode) and everything looks pretty clear except for the flowers themselves. I tried to take pictures of some buttercups in the front yard and had similar results. I am completely new to photography but I thought that auto mode should work fine outdoors in the sun. Have any of you S3 owners out there had similar problems, or do you think there could be something wrong with mine?

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Post some examples? You might be shooting in scenes where there's too much variation in light levels for the dynamic range of the camera's sensor...

Here is another example.

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change your Auto Focus to center weighted. Anything in the greenbox gets priority focus. If you hold the shutter and focus in the box, you can rearrange the photo if you need and it will still have focus on the flower.

Agreed. Focus on both pictures are on the grass instead of flowers.

Thanks for the comments. I'm glad it's bad photography instead of a bad camera

i have noticed that my s3 has a problem with bright yellow.. it seems to tone-down the yellow & give the rest of the image a blueish tint!! if i save the same image in RAW (using the hack) the pictures turn out a bit under exposed, but the yellow is bright & there is no blueish tint in the rest of the image. even i use different wb settings, it comes out the same!!!

in your case though, i think its a focusing problem coz the center of your pix is in focus!!

That appears to be a focus problem in my opinion.

i have had a similar phenomenon on flowers in which a deep bright red, yellow or white can often have the small intricacies missed - i.e the borders of each petal from the next. I have found that it has in part to do with direct hard sun (i live in the desert!), and when I played with the green/red/blue vibrant settings (not available on auto setting), I got better definition. When I get home, I can try to attach some examples.