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It's overcast today and everything looks white, but this doesn't look right.

I have a Cannon Powershot A550 at the moment.

I would like to buy a better quality camera, but something that isn't too expensive (under 500 dollars) and is easy to use. And with a more powerful zoom. Is there such a thing?

Any ideas appreciated. I am interested in buying a better camera to take on a trip this summer.

The water is white and washed out.

Well you have such a difference in brightness between the water and the rest of the composition.

Try photoshopping (or whatever program you might have) to get the water to come out better, then you will have to compromise between the water and the land to get something you can live with.

Here in Oregon, the sky is usually grey, and gets washed out easily, and if I want to have my subject clear, I have to live with a shitty sky.

Yeah, basically the problem is that the water is so much brighter than the rest of the frame. Your camera is probably metering the shot as an overall average of the frame, which does no good to the higher brightness water.

Easy fix: put the exposure on manual and stop it down about one stop.

Long fix: zone system. See if you can change the metering system on your camera to "spot" or something similar (some cameras have this ability). Meter the water, meter the tree, take the average.

Good to know danf, thanks.

Thanks backseatpilot, I will look into this.

It's not a necessarily a camera problem then? I guess I really don't know shite about photography.

Nah, it's not a problem with the camera, but those point-and-shoots sometimes have a little trouble with dynamic range (that would be the range of dark to light that it can handle). In a case like this I'd probably do a two-step process: Choose to overexpose one part of the picture (the water, probably) and then dodge it using Photoshop (or a dodging tool in the darkroom).

I checked, and your camera doesn't have automatic bracketing, so you'll have to do it yourself. Take two photos. Take one so that the sky is exposed properly. Take one so that your subject is exposed properly.

Also:
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That's as good as I could get it.

Wow citrusfreak! Thanks! That looks a lot better.

backseatpilot and danf, thanks again for the information.

LoriFLA, do you have photoshop?

if you do, then along with what CitrusFreak is proposing, i'd suggest also:

- practising with adjustment layers with both levels and saturation. levels can help adjust the over/underexposure and upping the saturation a bit can also help fix washy looking photos.

- learn how to use the burn/dodge tools as backseatpilot suggests.

seriously, just play around with it. photoshop can be pretty daunting but the more you futz around with it, the easier it'll get.

also, i'm still kludging along in PS 7, so i have no idea how well some of the new tonemapping and 'multi exposure' hdr-type tools work in the CS versions HOWEVER even my little olympus stylus point and shoot camera allows for exposure compensation.

one trick i also sometimes use with my happysnap camera in rough high-contrast shots like the one above is to try 'metering' a couple of different spots by holding in the shutter button halfway and watching how the lcd reads. note that this assumes everything you're metering is within the same focal plane... sometimes that's not the case.

and if all that doesn't work, i just shrug and if the capture's otherwise interesting, i'll do some kind of photoshoppery destructionism i.e. a faux lomo, sepia or something like that.

lfr, I don't have Photoshop. I'm stuck in the Dark Ages. I'm going to look into purchasing it. I've been wanting it for a while. I think I would have a lot of fun with it.

Hold that thought, LoriFLA.

Understanding histograms and dynamic range.