MY PEACE of JEWELRY photo shoot

[ZWalton]

Hi:

This is my first post. So excuse me if it's wrong.

I have been photographing for a while, mainly photographing (with a point-n-shoot camera) my jewelry, but I just got my first dslr a few days ago, which is a Nikon D3100. I have not even used it yet. I am reading the manual first, so I am sure how to even use the lense. Anyway, that is not my issue today. My issue today is lighting. Even with a point-n-shoot camera, in order to take good shots you need to consider the lighting. My question is how would you set up the following shot. The photo I have here was taken today, Friday, Feb 25, 2011 at 7:30am outside of my apartment. It was overcast, cloudy and about to rain. It's me wearing my necklace. I had my camera Aperture set on 4.0 and ISO on 80. The shot is clearly too dark. What would you have set your camera? What would you have done in post production? I have attached the original shot and the post production shot, which I used GIMP and basically adjusted the Level to lighten and adjusted the Brighness and Contrast too.

Thank you.
Zee

[msd]

You say your ISO was set at 80, but I think you may mean your shutter speed. With that said, I'd set your ISO a little higher, probably to 400 or 800.