Arnold, That's an interesting question and I think my solution probably flies in the face of conventional wisdom. I say the latter because a professional photographer who often stops by here prays for cloudy or rainy days prior to her visit. I take a lot of close-up, or relatively close-up images and need good depth of field to get everything in focus that I want. To do this I need a small aperture, hence if I have any choice in the matter I take my photos on sunny days, with the subject in full sun or very good light. You do have to watch for shadows on the subject giving excessive contrast across the image put careful positioning works pretty well. I use matrix metering as my exposure control and get evenly exposed images, usually requiring little adjustment. Color rendition seems excellent and I've never had obvious (to my eyes) discrepancies between the colors I see and those captured by the camera and rendered on screen or print. I also like the vibrancy introduced by sunlight - pictures taken without it seem rather flat in comparison. I very rarely use flash, if I have to then it is the built in flash that I use, no backlights, nothing fancy. With respect to detail I find that the Coolpix 995 gives outstanding results both close up and from afar. I mentioned I do sharpen all images - needed whatever the camera or source of the image and I use PS to do this. The camera's sharpening option is turned off - I like to get something off the camera that has not been manipulated at all, the latter can be done better and more consistently in PS. J. Dr John T Lonsdale 407 Edgewood Drive, Exton, Pennsylvania 19341, USA Phone: 610 594 9232 Fax: 801 327 1266 Visit "Edgewood" - The Lonsdale Garden at http://www.johnlonsdale.net/ Zone 6b