Learning about my camera

I've been spending a lot of time trying to learn everything about my little camera, in particular how to extend the tonal range it captures. I haven't been very happy with it: the highlights tend to get too white and shadows too black. They lack detail, even with some Photoshop doctoring. I now understand all of the settings on the camera. I don't know if I'll ever be entirely satisfied with it. In reality in this vertical picture the sun was a brilliant ball framed by the tree branches and the haze was not so heavy. The camera has compressed the highlights so there is little differentiation.

However, I'm not willing to burden myself with lots of equipment, and I can't see to focus an SLR. I'll stay with the point and shoot.

This morning I went out walking alone, again. Since I had been to Frick Park yesterday I just walked down Reynolds and over to Mellon Park.

It's a shorter route so I didn't get as much exercise, but the day was heating up quickly and I find this heat really debilitating. I took these pictures in Mellon Park. The haze is accentuated in the pictures; it wasn't quite that strong. I liked the play of light and shadow in an otherwise not very inspired landscape. I took the flower photo because I wanted to see whether I would get detail in the white blossom. The green is reasonable; the white is off the chart. I can probably fix it, but this is the unedited photo, taken without flash.