Help with Digital Rebel, please

I just got my Canon Digital Rebel last weekend and am having trouble with light. Almost all indoor pictures, even with the flash, and even some outdoor ones are dark and I'm having to touch them up with Photoshop. I don't have time to have to do that to every picture. Am I doing something wrong? I'm guessing you'll need more info to help, but since I'm new, I don't know what you'll need.

Thanks!

Welcome to the Forum! You are right, we need more info. What settings are you using? Full manual, full auto, aperture priority, shutter priority etc...? What ISO do you have the camera set on? Are you using your light meeter properly? I have had the DRebel for a few months now, and have never had a problem with my photos coming out too dark, unless it was user error... Please give us more info, and I would suggest posting some of your dark photos to give us something to go on.

Michael

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Originally Posted by twomiracles

I just got my Canon Digital Rebel last weekend and am having trouble with light. Almost all indoor pictures, even with the flash, and even some outdoor ones are dark and I'm having to touch them up with Photoshop. I don't have time to have to do that to every picture. Am I doing something wrong? I'm guessing you'll need more info to help, but since I'm new, I don't know what you'll need.

Thanks!

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Hi, there. Thanks in advance for any help. A little background...I've had 6 (yes, 6) Sony digital cams before this Canon, with the latest Sony being the DSC-F717. Always thought the image quality was awesome, but after the fourth one went defective, I gave up and went to the Canon.

As for the settings...I had it on full auto for all of these, I think. I'm not very educated on settings and haven't had alot of time to play with this camera. My expectations were, though, that on auto, I could get as good a shot as I would with a point and shoot...am I expecting too much?

Here's three pics...

Thanks!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by twomiracles

Hi, there. Thanks in advance for any help. A little background...I've had 6 (yes, 6) Sony digital cams before this Canon, with the latest Sony being the DSC-F717. Always thought the image quality was awesome, but after the fourth one went defective, I gave up and went to the Canon.

As for the settings...I had it on full auto for all of these, I think. I'm not very educated on settings and haven't had alot of time to play with this camera. My expectations were, though, that on auto, I could get as good a shot as I would with a point and shoot...am I expecting too much?

Here's three pics...

Thanks!

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The flash shots look like they were exposed properly for a foreground subject, which is where the exposure should be in auto with the flash being the main lighting-the background will be dark because the flash doesn't reach far enough. The third picture has a white background which would fool the camera meter into underexposing a bit. Try bumping up the iso settings and shoot without flash (use the ambient light for main light) and see if they're still underexposed. It may be the meter needs to be calibrated and sent in for repair, or you may have to bump up the exposure compensation for now if you're finding the camera is consistently underexposing. It might well be that your previous cameras were a bit overexposed too.

Edit:
The other thing is the flash itself. Are you using the onboard flash? On every Canon EOS I've had with built in flash, there is a tendency towards underexposure, which is why I bought the 550EX flash for my EOS lineup. Hope this helps.

The first two photos actually have a fair exposure but perhaps a "tad" dark for my personal preferences. The camera did the job it was supposed to on those. For example, notice that the cake is bright white with some detail still in it. The camera decided that it didn't want to blow out the details in the cake. The reason the background is so dark is because the two first shots were lit completely by flash and the shutter speed wasn't slow enough to allow any of the ambient light to show in the photo. The shutter in full auto would have been 1/60 of a second I believe. It looks like it was pretty dark there.

For the third photo this is a CLASSIC example that will teach you how camera meters work.

Read carefully:
1. If you took a photo of a white wall the camera will set the exposure so that it is of average value and thus the photo will end up looking greyish. (unperexposed)
2. If you took a photo of a grey wall the camera will set the exposure so that it is of average value and thus the photo will end up still looking greyish. (good exposure)
3. If you took a photo of a black wall the camera will set the exposure so that it is of average value and thus the photo will end up looking greyish. (overexposed)

The common thing between all of these photographs is that the photo will always be greyish....not bgright, not dark, but average tone in between.

This is the reason why the camera has what's called exposure compensation functions built into it. Eventually, you leanrn to recognize where and how to apply compensation before the photo is even taken.

HTH