Over exposing - Canon PowerShot A460 Digital Camera

Take that message to the cops tell the person is blackmailing you

Your camera is setting its exposure to your subject, which if it's darker than the background will cause the background to over expose. You need to set the exposure to the background which then will cause your background to be properly exposed and your foreground or subject to be darker. With a point n shoot camera, accomplishing this might be a difficult task. But if you expose to the background and use the fill flash, you should then get your properly exposed image.

Put the camera in full auto take some shots and if it is till over exposed you may need a repair job. If the shots are properly exposed then it may be some setting you've selected. Unfortunately there are a number of setting that result in over exposures.

Microwave ovens do not work well with exposed metal. IF you place uncoated metal in the oven, sparks will occur.
IF the interior of the oven has the metal exposed, it will cause sparking to occur.

There must be NO exposed metal inside a Microwave oven!

Most cameras have a form of exposure compensation. This allows for you to still use automatic modes, but tell the camera to over-expose it (make it brighter) or under-expose it (make it darker) by a bit. Check your settings, optimally you should leave the exposure compensation at 0 (neither over or under exposed).

It may be that you have inadvertently set your camera to shoot 'bracketing up' - ie over exposing for every shot. You need to look at the exposure ruler which looks something like this: l---l---l---l---l The centre bar is the correct exposure. But there is a little block that sits where you have got your +/- setting at. +/- is the sign for BRACKETING - where you tell the camera to over expose (+) or under expose (-). With Canon if the little block is to the right of the centre bar then you are telling the camera to over expose. Where is your little block? If it is to the right of the centre press your +/- button and turn the dial to the centre bar. NOTE: As digital cameras are WEAK in capturing highlights it is often better to shoot slightly under exposed - with your block set on the first or second horizontal line to the left of the centre bar. This means you are shooting 1/3 or 2/3 of an f/stop under exposed. Hope this helps.

try AUTO mode only...no TTL or FP on display

keep iso 100 and set ur screen brightness

I'm not clear about your last sentence. It sounds like you may have accidentally set the camera to use exposure compensation to over-expose the images. To reset this, see page 27 in your user manual. If you don't have the user manual you can download it here from Kodak. If you said in your last sentence that this is not the case, I apologize for not understanding you clearly.

If this is not the case, then the light meter in the camera may be malfunctioning, telling the camera that it doesn't have enough light.

1) Make sure the light sensor is clean. This is the lower of the 2 small light buttons on the front of the camera, to the left of the lens as you face the camera. If that doesn't help try:

2) Use a - setting in Exposure Compensation to under expose the images to compensate for the damaged light meter.

If neither of these help, then it needs to be sent in for repair, or replaced. (If the camera is out of warranty it is likely that the repair cost will exceed the value of the camera and you should simply buy a new camera.)

jc

Black pictures mean under exposed or un- exposed film

Underexposed film can mean incorrectly set up or metering failure
Un exposed film simply means the shutter has failed
Open camera and look through the back and operated the shutter
Does it work?