My photos are always dark

[didger]

Read your manual about histograms and learn to read them.  If your histogram is properly placed in the histogram display after an exposure, it means your exposure is correct.  The histogram should not be off the edge to the left or the right, but a bit more toward the right rather than centered or to the left, if possible.  Keep taking exposures and deleting failures until the histogram is properly placed in the display.  If the images are still very dark, then it may be a monitor problem.  Slight darkening or lightening can be done in Photoshop with adjust levels.

Once you know about exposure control and histograms, after a while you won't have to do a lot of trial and error to get the histogram right.

[BernardLanguillier]

3: Remove the lens cap before pressing the shutter release.

Gee.... that was my problem all this time... :-)

Cheers,
Bernard

[newbephotos]

All this time wasted, and all I really needed to do was to remove the lens cap...In a lot of ways I feel cheated.  If only I could get that time back some how.

On the other hand I have tried landscape photography at 65mph...Both my wife and my insurance are thinking about leaving me.  The good news is that I might have a publisher for the book...any suggestions for the name??  I like "Landscape Photography at 65mph!!" Or maybe "Parks, Photography, and Police...Three Days, Three Different State Parks".

I don't know,
Newbe

 

[didger]

VERY VERY cool.
Uh, but I think I'd want a little protection where the lens cap material is missing, so how about a piece of glass?  Oh, oh, it should be optical quality glass.  Aha, I'll take the glass out of one of my UV filters and glue it on the lens cap.  I'll split the royalties with you when the concept goes mainstream.

[newbephotos]

I am new at at this and was wondering why my photos are always dark...I have to lighten then up in Photoshop. What can I do different with my camera? I shoot with the Canon 20D.

[Jonathan Wienke]

I am new at at this and was wondering why my photos are always dark...

1: Learn to expose properly. Digital Exposure And Metering Strategies

2: Learn about color management and most specifically, monitor calibration. Color Mangement Intro

3: Remove the lens cap before pressing the shutter release.

[didger]

As per some excellent expert lens cap advice on another thread, you're probably ruining half your shots with the darkness resulting from leaving the lens cap on and you're missing the other half because it takes so much time to take the lens cap off.  The secret to good landscape photography is to avoid anything that takes time.  Handheld P&S and no lens caps is THE WAY.  It may also help to learn to shoot out of your car window one handed while driving with the other hand.  You can do comprehensive coverage of several National Parks in a day or two that way.

[boku]

To prevent such mishaps in the future, I just used a hole saw to drill 1-1/2" holes in the center of all my lens caps. No more dark frames for me! :laugh:  :laugh:  :laugh:

[Image Northwest]

Innovations Are Us

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

This is a very sensitive subject with me, folks. Although I have been photographing for a long time (perhaps even longer than that youngster, Didger), a few years ago I got myself a nifty Mamiya 6, a 6x6 rangefinder, film camera. It was my first rangefinder camera in many a year, and I found myself frequently encountering those "severely underexposed" shots, usually the first three or four shots on a roll.

Highly embarrassing, to say the least.  

In desperation I stuck a couple of Velcro dots on the front of the camera, with a mating dot on a piece of cardboard to block the rangefinder window whenever the lens cap was on. Thereafter, whenever I put the cap on or off, I would also move the rangefinder blocker. Of course, it would have been simpler to glue one of Didger's UV filters onto a hole in the cap . . .