Please don’t point, shoot and hope.
I decided to take a point-n-shoot shot of a hanging flower basket. Check out what the camera decided to do in Aperture Priority mode with auto focus. Errors: Wrong light level for the subject and the auto focus missed the flower-basket subject. Camera settings for the bad news shot: ISO 100, 28mm lens, f4.5 @ 1/20th, Center-weighted metering, auto focus.
Thinking there must be some things I could due to capture a more pleasing image,
Add a touch of flash with manual focus.
I changed the camera settings to the following: ISO 100, 28mm lens, f4.5 @ 1/60th, Center-weighted metering, manual focus and (most important) off-camera flash set to -1 1/3 stops under exposure. I’ll bet you can see a difference. Consider investing in an external flash since it provides lots of options.