Why are my images suddenly very dark?

[BertieTBE]

Hello everyone,

A very odd thing has happened to me this weekend, which I can't explain. Perhaps the experts among you could shed some light on the subject (no pun intended)

I've been shooting a folk festival, and got some nice shots of the various goings on. But as the sun started to go down in the evening all my images suddenly started to look horribly dark, yet only a few minutes earlier I was shooting the same subjects, with the same settings, in the same location, and getting favourable results. How is that possible?

Is this under exposure? Or a lack of light?

It wasn't very dark (early twilight). There was no blinking / warning sign that I'd normally get when there's not enough light for my lens.

- Tried a wider aperture. No change.

- Tried upping the ISO. That didn't do anything.

- Tried dialling in some exposure compensation: -2/3. That looked even worse.

- In case it was the background, I switched to partial metering. No difference.

Am I missing something?

Started with this:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ik6hmxiigvyllbp/IMG_0294.JPG

A few minutes later I started getting this:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7fumu5eck4k2sz7/IMG_0323.JPG

Any advice much appreciated.

Many thanks.

BertieTBE

 

[JT74]

+ 2/3?

 

[driver_wedge]

The two scenes are different. The houses in the background are perfectly exposed, to the detriment if your main subjects. The camera has just tried to find a happy medium for the overall scene. You should probably expose for the subjects, or shoot in raw and rescue in pp.

 

[petersmart]

The first pic is a bit light I would say and the second one is darker because your camera has read the sky and the light wall behind the people and given a general exposure which has rendered the people too dark.

And an EC of -2/3 will actually make it darker still, so as JT74 said it should have been +2/3.

I did a quick and dirty edit which shows that although it is dark all the detail is there (even in the sky).

It's not too good because the picture only had a resolution of 72 PPI which is normal for the web but not too good for editing.

​

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[StewartR]

The two scenes are different. The houses in the background are perfectly exposed, to the detriment if your main subjects. The camera has just tried to find a happy medium for the overall scene. You should probably expose for the subjects, or shoot in raw and rescue in pp.

This is it. I don't know what "partial" metering is on your camera, or what mode you were using before you switched to "partial", but basically the problem is that the bright sky in the second image has confused the camera's metering system. Parts of the scene are bright, part are dark, and it doesn't know what you want to do.

 

[Scarecrow]

It's not too good because the picture only had a resolution of 72 PPI which is normal for the web but not too good for editing.

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For an image downloaded from the web, the PPI would make no difference whatsoever. What does make a difference is the size of the image, 800x533 for the edited picture you posted, which is the true resolution of the image. Pictures from the web viewed on a monitor are measured in pixels, not inches, so the imbedded PPI is of no relevance.