Tips for Photographing Dark Hair?

Have you tried adjusting the white balance? The difference in lip colour and resin tone between the pictures suggests that it might just be a question of getting the WB right.

 

Upgrading the camera will probably not help much unless you want to jump all the way up to a DSLR, and even then you'd probably have a lot of the same problems. What you need to do here is get more light into the camera.

Basically there are two ways to do this, and you want to do both. The first way is to get more light. Clip lamps and desk lamps are good for this. If possible, use several in different places or you'll end up casting some pretty harsh shadows. Experiment with how far away you put the lights in relation to the doll, and softening the light by using reflectors or shining it through something translucent (tissue paper, thin cloth).

The second thing is a longer shutter speed. The best way to pull this off is to use either your camera's self-timer or a remote shutter release, so your hands aren't on the camera when the shutter goes. Put the camera on a tripod, or prop it on something stable (stacks of books are good). Most cameras I've used have a timer setting where the shutter goes off after 2 seconds, which is enough time to get your hands off the camera. Dolls don't move, so a long exposure isn't hard to manage as long as you're not touching the camera.

Your photos will probably still need some work. Indoor light isn't the same color temperature as outdoor light. Mess around with levels and curves... there's not really a trick to either, you just have to fiddle until you get it right. I find the white balance on my camera is usually not great so I generally correct white balance outside the camera. (I cannot, alas, give you specific tips because I shoot RAW and edit in lightroom.)

If you REALLY want to get into hardcore messing with things, you can install this aftermarket firmware on your camera. That will allow you to keep your photos in RAW format, which allows for much better editing for things like exposure and white balance if you have the right software (I've used both Lightroom and Aperture and liked both, and there's a RAW plugin for photoshop as well I believe). It also gives you access to a lot of manual controls. But it is putting aftermarket firmware on your camera so it's not for the faint of heart/people using their parents' cameras.

 

you may want to use a light coloured back drop and shine a lamp on her when you're taking pictures. I'm no professional, but that would be the first thing I would try. there are probably a lot of people on here with better advice then that though XD

 

I tried doing a quick play in photoshop to see if anything I usually use works, but it's really hard to restore colour in a dark hair wig when the original shot doesn't have the colour. The only way to resolve this is just have more light. I suggest when taking photos indoors, wait for the time where the light in the room is the brightest (around 9am or 5pm), and open up the windows, curtains, everything. Try a shot, and see if it's overexposed (usually unlikely, but you'll never know), then adjust the curtains, doors opening etc as needed to achieve the best exposure and colour. It really really helps to get lighting right. Even using a DSLR won't solve this problem much (as I've recently found out D: ).

 

I'm coming late to this thread but there is one point I'd like to add...

Just getting more light, while important is not enough. Where that
light is coming from is also important. Visit your local library and find
yourself a book that covers lighting for portraiture. After all that is
the desired end product here. Formal portrait lighting includes something
called a "hair light". It's purpose is to provide a hair highlight to separate
the hair from the background.

Here is a quick portrait lighting tutorial you may find of interest.

http://www.larry-bolch.com/portrait-basics/

Tom