canon eos 1300d exposure

zstone wrote:

When i am mid-picture the exposure is fine, but as soon as it focuses the screen goes black.so then i look at the info and it says exposure is -3. Then i use the scroller and the picture goes back to normal but the shutter speed has gone right down.

To sum up, when i use the scroller the exposure is goes back to normal but the shutter speed goes down to 4.it is doing to things at once,it should'nt.

thank you

Welcome! The world of DSLRs can be quite daunting at first.

The first thing one has to do is figure out what the camera is telling you.

I'm assuming from your description that you're using the back LCD (Live View) for taking pictures, correct?

Live View will simulate the exposure on the back screen. That's why the screen goes dark when the Exposure is set to -3 (That's -3 stops underexposed!). Not a setting that you would want to use for ordinary shooting (otherwise all of your pictures will turn out dark, just like in the exposure simulation).

So when you adjust that Exposure back to normal ( 0 ), the picture brightens back up. The camera can brighten the picture in one of threee ways: it can make the aperture larger, raise the ISO, or slow the shutter speed down. From your description, it is slowing the shutter speed down. (For more on this Google "Exposure Triangle")

You can go ahead and shoot at that slower shutter speed, unless the pictures exhibit too much camera shake or subject motion blur. In that case you can make the aperture larger (smaller numbers) so that you can keep the shutter speed up, unless the aperture is already maxxed out. Or you can raise the ISO, but you'll have to deal with the extra Noise (and resulting loss of color, contrast, and detail).

If you want to keep everything automatic, then enable "Auto ISO" so that the camera adjusts all three of the triangle's legs.

There are always trade-offs in photography, even for the old pros. The challenge is to find the balance point that works best for you.

If you can supply us with more information on your equipment, your settings, and the subjects you are trying to shoot, we can further tailor our responses to help you better. Also, if you can include a couple of samples (without the EXIF being stripped), that would be a great help too.

TIA,

R2

ps. If I'm way off base and this isn't what's happening, give me a shout and I can dig further (if you can provide some more info).