Camera auto-adjusting lighting

Hello everyone, I'm starting my journey into photography for comics and possibly stop motion. I use the Fujifilm FinePix S2940WM which I understand is probably a terrible camera however I'm still learning many things with it as I go along.

The main issue I'm running into is the camera auto adjusts the lighting when taking pictures but I want to have manual control over it to keep it locked in place. What are all the different settings within the camera that can change the lighting? Is it shutterspeed and aperture?

According to its specs, it has a manual mode (and aperture priority, which is generally best for figures). You'll definitely want it on a tripod if you are not already using one.

Basically, set it to ISO 100, aperture priority, and put it on a tripod. Start from there. Google some beginner photography guides for information about how to control the exposure (what you are calling lighting). Brightness is controlled both aperture and shutter. You control the light with both in various combinations.

I agree, for stills, aperture priority is the most flexible choice for figure photography since you're left to adjust the depth of focus (which is usually quite shallow at the close shooting distances common with figure photography) whereas the camera will take care of the shutter speed to make sure the resulting picture is bright enough. If your scene is complex enough, it's not uncommon for a camera to make a bad guess; that's where you use your exposure compensation feature. Basically it's a means of brightening or darkening your camera's best guess.

www.manualslib....

For stop motion you are right to choose manual mode [which thankfully your camera also appears to have] because it eliminates the chance that either the depth of focus or the exposure to vary between frames. Setup is pretty easy since you can go into aperture priority mode, dial in the aperture you want and then borrow its computed shutter speed for use when you go back to manual mode. That said, if your scene changes significantly in brightness during your shoot, it'll be entirely up to you to adjust the aperture or exposure to compensate.

www.manualslib....

Once you've had time to experiment a bit, I really hope that you'll share the results here. I'm really curious as to what you'll come up with.

Thanks very much! I do have a tripod with 2 halogen lamps, also the ISO was set to 100 (yeah!).Sorry I haven't provided enough details, still getting a hang of things. Tsunami3k hit the right kind of info I'm going after. I'll post my progress here after some experimenting.

I believe I have solved the mystery of my lighting issue from the looks of it. I firstly switched to Aperture mode to make my adjustments there and saved it then switching to Manual mode to "borrow" the settings from Aperture while having control of making changes to the Shutter speed.

This first image was taken with just room lighting and a longer shutter timing, the issue with this is the light used along with the wood walls of my room creates this yellowish wood tone. My goal is to use as minimal lighting possible so that I don't cook the figures ^^;
(Images in spoilers)
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Well I solved that with using one halogen lamp with the brightest setting so the remainder of the images are using this exact same setup unchanged, the results show that the coloring stays uniform throughout the various shots even when comparing dark figures versus lighter figures and even scenery/position changes.
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Nice, your experiments are evolving really fast! I'm glad you had a chance to try things out so quick. Thank you for sharing your results too.

You mention color which can be a tricky topic too. If you're using auto white-balance (usually in camera as "AWB") then there is some chance that the camera will miss-guess between frames as with the other auto settings. You can hope that one of the fixed white-balance setting like "Daylight", "Cloudy", "Tungsten", etc. are a close enough match to fit your preferences or you can get a neutral white or grey card to use to measure the light's color temperature for the camera to use through your whole photo shoot.

www.manualslib....

It's tempting to find something nearby that looks white or grey but it's pretty rare to find something that's actually neutral in tone so it's definitely worth the tiny cost of a paper target and, if you anticipate using it a lot, somewhat more for a more durable variant.

There are several other approaches but these are probably the best balance between good results and straightforwardness for anyone still stockpiling knowledge. Cheers!

Wow, was not expecting so much >< (but it is very welcome!) I'll make sure this info does not go to waste, I'm already experimenting around with the white balance. Previously I had it set to Incandescent but am now experimenting with the Custom to a paper target. Will definitely help in the 2nd issue I had, I'm already seeing a great improvement. Thanks for the speedy response too, surely helps me to improve my project much sooner so I don't give my viewers an eyesore ^^;