Setting up your camera for beach or snow scenes is really quite simple, unlike some other Panasonic cameras. This camera does not have a snow or beach scene mode, so you don’t turn the mode dial there. Keep your mode dial on P. This stands for program and this will give you the flexibility you need to set up the camera properly. Remember as always, make sure the ISO and the white balance are properly set. Press the ISO button here to access ISO. Since we’re outdoors and there’s a lot of light, I’m going to leave this set to 100 because I don’t need it to be anymore sensitive. Go ahead and press set and if I press white balance, I can choose from the different white balance options.

Again, we’re outdoors so daylight is a good option. If it’s a cloudy day, or if you’re in the shade, you can choose cloudy or shade, that will help warm up the tones a little bit. But in this case, I’m going to stick to daylight, press set. Now basically, what’s happening is the bright ground from the sand or the snow is making the scene so bright that the camera has to darken it down a little bit. It doesn’t realize that the snow needs to be white and it assumes it needs to be gray. So what you want to do is turn up the exposure compensation just a little bit. In order to that, use your dial right up here. This dial can be press in like a button and then you can roll it across to choose the different setting.

So just press the button. You can see the exposure compensation is highlighted in yellow and you can move that over. Brighten it up about 2/3 or 1/3. It really depends on how bright the scene needs to be. Now, with the exposure compensation a little bit brighter, you can go ahead and take the picture as usual.

Remember to place the focusing brackets over your subject. Press the shutter button halfway to lock focus and then recompose the image, then press the shutter button the rest of the way to take the picture.

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