To me it does look a bit under ro me as well. The meter probably read the highlights from the flash bounced off the bright parts of the picture, the metal and wood edges. With digital, as with slide film, you may be better off with a bit of under exposure to keep the highlights in check. Shadow detail is relatively easy to recover in PS.

Attached is my quick fix: auto levels and adjust lighting in PSE 4, default settings.

Adjust the contrast/brightness using levels and it'll come out looking more accurate.

Thanks for the replies. I'm able to make all of the pictures look wonderful in PSE4, I was just wondering if the camera should be doing this work for me. Didn't know whether this was worth going back to the store to discuss or not (I bought an extensive warranty that covers everything down pretty much pouring milk in the sensor chamber).

It's not my camera and I don't really know what you expect, but I've never seen a picture that couldn't be improved by post processing, digital or film.

larry what setting do you recomment. my pics are always too dark even though the look great on the LCD

Check your LCD brightness level. It may be set too bright and not match what the camera/lens is capturing.

You can also try the sunny F16 test to see if your meter is working. 1/ISO at F16 should be the approximate exposure of an object in sunlight. For example, at ISO 200, the exposure should be approximately 1/200 second at F16.

thank you. will try.

larry. i lowered the brightness on my lcd does that mean that
i'll get a more accurate "picture" of what my printed picture will look like?

It means that if your metering is correct, you'll see a closer representation of what's being captured.

As to what the final print will look like, that depends on what post processing you're doing. But at least the capture will look accurate.

I might add that the histogram is a photographer's best friend. It is the ultimate light-meter, and I expect that Ansel would have killed for it! Once you are familiar with it, in a glance it will tell you all you need to know about your exposure, so you can use the exposure correction feature to fine tune it.

Hopefully, this will explain some of its mysteries.
http://www.larry-bolch.com/histogram/