By the time I’m done with a bag and ready to shoot photos of it, the natural sunlight that streams so generously through my living room windows in the day is usually long gone. More often than not, I’m left with insufficient IKEA lighting that either results in a dark, dreary photo; a washed out photo with too much flash; or one with yellow tints from my wannabe high-powered (but not), energy-saving compact flourescent bulbs.

After a few whining emails to my sister and brother-in-law asking if I should invest in a lighting kit for better shots (when in doubt, throw money at it), they suggested I start by adjusting the white balance settings on my camera. In fact, on their previous recommendation I *had* tried all white balance settings…EXCEPT for the manual one. Until last night! Well, I didn’t expect much, but I was pleasantly surprised by the result when I got this photo out of it!

I was so excited to try this out that I forgot to take a “before” picture, but I’ll do that on my next break and post a side-by-side comparison. Until then, I have a Casio Exilim EXZ55, and all I had to do was this:

After reading through more of the instruction manual (pdf), which I haven’t looked at in years, I realize that my little point-and-shoot camera packs more of a punch than I realized.

The next thing I’m going to try out is the BESTSHOT mode, which allows you to either choose a scene with predefined settings (e.g. candelight portrait, food, scenery), or set up and save your own scene. If my before-and-after demonstrates a significant difference, I’m going to try defining a “product” scene, saving my white balance settings and any other settings that help.

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