It was a dark and stormy morning...

Taking photos with an automatic camera means accepting that exposure control is tied to focusing - it's a joint operation that can't be separated. If the subject of your photo is too bright or too dark, you must find something at a similar distance which is the correct brightness and lock your focus on that instead, then swing the camera back to frame the actual subject of your photo.

That's my method of operation when photographing the sunrise. Specifically, I madly click away at whatever there is to focus on (anything but the sun) and just hope for the best. The camera's preview screen gives only a vague indication of results, so it's not until the files are loaded onto computer that the true impact is unleashed of a shot like this one today:


Whoa! Scary sky. A classic "miss" in the "hit-and-miss" genre.