Another hint is to photograph your guns right side up. An upside down picture of a gun is like trying to read a book upside down. If you have to photograph it upside down to get the lighting right, flip it right side up before posting.
If you are shooting your camera on automatic, don't use a white background. If the white background composes most of your photograph your camera will expose the white correctly, underexposing your subject. As others have mentioned, a matte background of a neutral color will generally expose correctly on automatic. Most point and shoot cameras have exposure controls, so you may have to play with exposure to get you subject correctly exposed.
I used 35mm for years, and even though the camera had automatic exposure, I always read my closeups with a hand held meter.
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