Read Ken Rockwell on Modern Exposure.
The steps for taking a good photograph with a digital camera are:
- Take a photo.
- Look at the screen.
- Change settings.
- Go to back step 1.
The settings you'll want to change on an S90 are:
- Exposure compensation.
- ISO.
- Flash.
- White balance (particularly white balance adjustment)
- Saturation
On most compacts, each of these is hidden somewhere in a menu and is hard to access. Even on a DSLR, they can be hard to find.
Look up the "hard way" to adjust them in the manual, through the FUNC. SET menu. One hint: White balance trim is accessed by first selecting white balance, then AWB (auto white balance), then hitting DISP. From there you can do Amber-Blue and Green-Magenta adjustment with the up-down-left-right buttons around FUNC. SET.
Saturation: Called "My Colors". Use Vivid for landscapes, Neutral for portraits.
The S90 gives you two control wheels in the front (around the lens) and back (around the buttons). These wheels can be programmed with the RING FUNC button (on top). Look it up.
Confusingly, the possible wheel settings depend on camera mode, which is set with the wheel at the top. Set that to P, which is what I normally use; it means that the camera chooses shutter and aperture.
In P mode, there are two RING FUNCs you might consider:
- The third one, exposure compensation on front wheel and ISO on back wheel
- The fifth one, Amber-Blue white balance trim on front wheel and exposure compensation on back wheel
I normally use the third one. Here the front wheel is exposure compensation. I change this if the image comes out too dark or too bright. Most of the time, it's at –2/3, which means that most of the time I think my S90 overexposes. Use your artistic judgment. See Ken Rockwell's guide for more.
The back wheel would be ISO. I leave it at AUTO most of the time, but will change it to 80 if I want high quality or a long exposure time, for example to capture lightning.
Final pieces of advice:
A lot of things can be fixed later in Photoshop or Lightroom, but it's best to get the right photo in camera because who wants to spend hours in front of Photoshop.
One thing that can't be fixed is if your picture is overexposed in the highlights - example if clouds are too bright and you lose details there. You can always brighten up shadows in Photoshop, but once you blow the highlights they're gone forever.
Be careful about zooming in too much in low light situations. The aperture is only f/4.9 at the tele end and f/2 at the wide end. The lens can collect a lot more light if you zoom out.