Pictures dark after downloading

I recently bought the 5D and find the pictures look EXCELLENT when viewed on camera, but are about 2 stops underexposed after I download them. I download with a flashcard reader, not from the camera. Am I doing something wrong or is this a flaw in the camera?

A silly question, but do you have the camera LCD brightness turned way up? I have not noticed such an effect with my equipment...
--
Rich Lanthier
amateur hobbyist; having fun and learning a lot, I think

It may be your monitor settings and brightness levels or perhaps your backlight levels. I do know that each monitor is different and may need some adjustment.

I have a new LCD monitor and the backlight is wonderful but have learned that my printed photo's will be darker than the monitor display so I have to adjust accordingly.

Hope this helps.

Darwin

What program are you downloading to -are these Jpegs or RAW files that we are talking about ?

Keith-C

Your sample pictures posted here would help us to help you a lot.

--
http://www.pictures2.com

Al Dugan wrote:

Shoot some more and look at the histogram on the camera , or look at the levels in photoshop of the existing photos. If the have no information in the bright end of the histogram, then they are simply underexposed. They may have looked good on the LCD, but probably could have looked better.

I have never heard of the exposure changing by accident. One has to adjust the levels deliberately. The best thing to do is get the exposure as close to perfect as you can in the first place.

Al

Is it an LCD, they are tough to work with pictures unless they are an expensive one adjusted properly.

Have you looked at them on another pc with an older CRT monitor.

Adjusting the gamma on mine was the big thing, but my normal screens are now a little brighter and washed out. But pictures look great.

--
Thanks,

Digitalshooter!

Out of curiousity do you take a lot of low light images? A common thing with seeing images fine on the LCD and then having them turn out darker on your computer is that in low light settings with the LCD turned up your eyes get hypersensitive to light. That translates into the images looking great on the LCD preview and dark on the computer. The nice thing is you can adjust your LCD brightness down a bit to help compensate and use the histogram to ensure you are getting a good shot. Even with images that turn out dark you can lighten them in your editing software to correct most problems.

I take mostly night, underground, and very low light shots so that was a problem I learned to get by fairly quickly. You may try calibrating your monitor as well. I hope this helps!
--
I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks.
Daniel Boone.

http://Hollow-Hills.com

Thanks to many who responded. Let me respond to those and provide a little more info.

Camera display brightness is middle setting. On computer a CRT is used, it is not set dark. I use this to view images from many cameras and other sources. I view these pictures in Paintshop Album and Adobe Elements 3. I don't believe there is any issue with the monitor settings but possibly an issue with the download. These are jpegs not raw, downloaded by copying from a flash card reader, not the KM software.

I am not at that computer now, so can't post the pictures, but there are two sets, some bright sun, others mid day with clouds. All of a soccer match. They look perfect on the camera. I can brighten them on the computer but it takes a lot of brightening (almost the full slider in Paintshop). I had similar results with some indoor flash pictures.

Histogram information - Histogram in adobe has more illumination in lower half of spectrum but some do extend near top end. Histogram in the camera has the bulk of the pixels near the center or just below center with some up to the top but not much in the lower 1/4. There is a difference here as there is a skew toward the brighter side when viewed on camera.

Thanks for any suggestions.

GreyKat,

Thanks for your suggestions. HOwever, these are bright sun daylight pictures. What I think is going on is that the camera is exposing for the highlights and is keying on the sky, consequently the main subject is dark. I can adjust on the computer, its just a pain to adjust 100 pictures individually. It seems that the camera displays the image, not straight up the way it is taken but adjusts to match the middle of the exposure density, much like the adjustments made when getting auto processing of prints. It seems to me that the meeting system is not very good that it doesn't compensate for sky or other highlights that throw off the exposure. Anyone have ways to work around this?
Thanks
Billkam

GreyKat said:

Out of curiousity do you take a lot of low light images? A common
thing with seeing images fine on the LCD and then having them turn
out darker on your computer is that in low light settings with the
LCD turned up your eyes get hypersensitive to light. That
translates into the images looking great on the LCD preview and
dark on the computer. The nice thing is you can adjust your LCD
brightness down a bit to help compensate and use the histogram to
ensure you are getting a good shot. Even with images that turn out
dark you can lighten them in your editing software to correct most
problems.
I take mostly night, underground, and very low light shots so that
was a problem I learned to get by fairly quickly. You may try
calibrating your monitor as well. I hope this helps!
--
I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for
several weeks.
Daniel Boone.

http://Hollow-Hills.com

Click to expand...

Al,

Thanks. There are pixels in the high end of the histogram but the majority are in the bottom 3/4. I think the metering is keying on the sky and underexposing the main subject. It seems that the playback on the camera adjusts the display for the majority of the light density in the shot which, in this case, biases it to show brighter than actually taken. Not a good choice in my mind. Do you know a way to work around this? Using exporsure compensation is a bad idea since it will lead to over exposure on shots that do not have these highlights.

Al Dugan said:

Al Dugan wrote:

Shoot some more and look at the histogram on the camera , or look
at the levels in photoshop of the existing photos. If the have no
information in the bright end of the histogram, then they are
simply underexposed. They may have looked good on the LCD, but
probably could have looked better.

I have never heard of the exposure changing by accident. One has
to adjust the levels deliberately. The best thing to do is get
the exposure as close to perfect as you can in the first place.

Al

Click to expand...

billkam said:

adjustments made when getting auto processing of prints. It seems
to me that the meeting system is not very good that it doesn't
compensate for sky or other highlights that throw off the exposure.
Anyone have ways to work around this?

Click to expand...

No metering will compensate fully for the bright sky, it will only try to do it but it is you as a photographer who has the final decision. Usually it is recommended to make exposure compensation in both dark and bright scenes as long as the metering system is often fooled by the highlights.

As for seeing brighter pictures on the camera's LCD I can only say that you may try to adjust the monitor according to the recommendations given in the camera's manual: gamma has to be set to 2.2, color space has to be sRGB and the color temperature has to be set to 6500K. If you gamma setting is lower than 2.2 then you'll see darker images on the computer screen...

--
Marat

billkam said:

I recently bought the 5D and find the pictures look EXCELLENT when
viewed on camera, but are about 2 stops underexposed after I
download them. I download with a flashcard reader, not from the
camera. Am I doing something wrong or is this a flaw in the camera?

Click to expand...

Have you sorted out your problem bilkam?

I was reminded of you when I read an article in this week's Amateur Photographer ( UK weekly mag.) about a photographer who converted to digital from film SLR.

His message was he was seduced by the pictures as he saw them on the screen, but quickly learned never to trust what he saw there as is was no representation of the real exposure. He recommended, as I have also found, to look at the histogram for guidance.

Auto exposure will always try to place the overall exposure value in the middle of the histogram. So you will see the histogram with a middle hump. However if, as it seems in your case, there is lots of sky, there should be a big hump on the right hand side and you MUST adjust the exposure to get the sky right up into the highlight zone otherwise the loss of detail will be at the low end.

If on the other hand your image is dominated with dark tones, you need to adjust the histogram so that the bulk of the exposure is at the dark end, not a middle mid tone.

The camera will never know that you want the sky to be very bright. It will always assume that the average tone is mid tone.

Not sure if this helps, but it beats reading the tales of woe on other threads, and I'd put my money on this being your problem. Any other solution requires the technology to behave in very strange ways.

Robrol

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Loitering with intent to buy a 2nd generation KM DSLR
But what will the badge say??