Your problem is that the pale pink flowers are overexposed, in a see of dark green leaves. This is what your camera will automatically do if you set it to the "automatic" or "point and shoot" mode. The key is to control the following: 1. The object lighting 2. The background (and foreground) lighting 3. Controlling contrast in your composition 4. Camera settings of speed, aperture and ISO. You need to experiment - i.e. "fool around" - with your camera. It's much easier to learn nowadays with the digital camera. In the "old days" of film cameras, one would have to shoot at different apertures, speed, ISO, take the film to develop and then see the results. And, of course, there is the cost of the film and the developing. I would start off with simple manouvres - try varying the aperture - which determines how much light is allowed in to hit the sensor for a given period of time that the shutter is open. The smaller the number, the more light that's allowed in. The higher the number, the less light. You can do this either with the manual setting (usually "M") or a selection on your camera called aperture priority ("A" or "Av"). Once you have "fixed" the aperture size, you then compensate for the variation in light hitting the sensor by varying the shutter speed, and the "film" speed - the ISO setting. If your camera has an Av or A setting, then, I won't worry about those - just switch to Av, select the aperture size and camera will do the rest. Unfortunately, I don't believe there is an Av or A setting on the Power Shot SD400 - you have to set it to M (manual mode) and get into the menu to select the ISO's. Refer to the owner's manual. An interesting impact of varying the aperture is that you will vary the "depth of field". The depth of field is the distance range of the picture where all objects will be withing focus. The larger the aperture, the narrower the range, rendering every thing outside of that range out of focus. You can use this to advantage, as, together with careful lighting, you can make an object "pop" out of the background, like this: However, it won't be much good if you want a picture of a whole bush or a whole bed - in which case, you would use a smaller aperture setting. There is an excellent on-line resource, DigitalPhotography.com, which gives fairly clear tutorials on the various aspects of digital photography.

Please ignore this thread. I goofed and duped when posting. the actual thread is at http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/trees/msg061640114153.html sorry admin folks.. if there are any watching..

Do the lines move at all? It could be timecode or closed captioning issues... If you can adjust the height of the picture you may be able to get rid of them...but it may be the sign of pending issues. My ex wife got a little tv when she turned 21 (back in Australia in 1982 or so, they were expensive then) - sometime in the '90's there was a "zzzzt" noise, and the height of the picture suddenly decreased and there were white lines at the top. I could adjust the picture height but figured that was it. To my surprise, it still worked when we split up in 2002 and, according to the kids, it is still going. So try adjusting first...

With all do respect, I would not invest too much into new cabinets, until the floorplan can be fixed. You'll get more bang for your buck later when you can adjust the window height. To get the kitchen better use until then use a piece of furniture or shelving on that wall. So, it can easily be moved & used elsewhere when a whole remodel can be done. Getting this kitchen updated with a better floorplan will add value to your home in future. i have been in the real estate & remodeling business 12+ years. I try to advise clients to put their hard earn $ where it could bring the most return. In my market, I know this kitchen would be an issue,but it has sooo much potential. I hope you can find a good deal getting at least the smaller window adjusted.