K200D Screen bright but not when pitures downloaded.

Darthan · 06-24-2009, 06:03 AM

Hi I just bought a Pentax K200D and realy like it I have a SIGMA EF530DG SUPER FLASH PA-PTTL as my main flash. I noticed that when I take picture and view it on the view screen they seem well exposed and bright. However when I download the pictures to photoshop light room they all seem to be under exposed. Some are very dark but on the screen they are bright. It seems to do it with all the lenses that I have as well.

Thanks

Kevin

K McCall · 06-24-2009, 06:54 AM

Could it be that your computer monitor is the problem?

There's quite a few things you could do. First, you could buy or rent monitor calibration software and make sure your monitor isn't the problem. I've never done this myself, and I tend to use about five different computers depending on where I am to do post-processing, so I just have a couple of photos that I KNOW what they should look like based on physical prints done by a professional printer, and if those pictures look too dark or too light, I know the monitor is the issue.

Next, you could look at your camera settings. Under MENU and SETUP there's a BRIGHTNESS feature. Make sure it's not set to +7 or something, because that will definitely skew your results on-camera versus on the computer screen.

Next you could look at the calibration of the import preset on Lightroom. I'd have to do some research into this one to know what Lightroom does immediately to the photo. One thing is certain, though: what you see on your camera screen is just the low-res jpg of the image; what you see in Lightroom is either the RAW or the full-res jpg that you took. If you have your jpg settings on your camera to contrasty, saturated, etc etc that will affect what the low-res on-camera picture looks like, where your RAW on your computer monitor will likely look flat and muddy by comparison.

Finally, there's the histogram, which should be the same on-camera and in Lightroom. Look at that, and you can see if your photos are properly exposed regardless of the camera screen or the computer screen. A histogram like with a hill that peaks in the middle or even to the right of the middle indicates proper exposure; if the peak is the left of the middle, you're underexposed.

Jonathan Mac · 06-24-2009, 09:23 AM

I had the exact same problem. I downloaded some pics from my K200D onto my parents´ PC & they appeared underexposed but it was due to their monitor being dark. The camera screen gives an accurate image as regards exposure. Try them on another computer, or another monitor, or increase the brightness on the monitor you´re using.

*reeftool* · 06-24-2009, 11:17 AM

A quick check of the histogram will tell you if you are over or under expoxed as others have mentioned. I have a few computers available to me and and I download all my shots to 2 of them. One always shows up slightly darker than the other and does so with different monitors. I traced that one to differences in the graphics of the 2 motherboards. The darker one has Via onboard graphics. It really isn't too much of a problem as I can boost things a bit. The problem would be photos that I upload. If I boost the exposure in PP they would appear overexposed possibly to online viewers so I adjust the monitor brightness. I suspect that many exposure issues people complain about could actually be monitor/graphics card issues.

*khardur* · 06-24-2009, 09:13 PM

a few things to think about as well:
1. If you're loading them into Lightroom, check to be sure you're not applying an unwanted preset to them all as you're importing them.

2. Know that the image you see on your camera LCD is based on the .jpg created with whatever image settings you picked (bright, natural, etc) but if you're loading RAW files into Lightroom it won't take those settings into account. If you only shoot jpg then see #1 above.

3. If you own a fairly expensive image processing program like Lightroom you should invest in a monitor calibration tool if you don't have one already. Actually for anyone else reading, no matter what image processing tool you use, I would recommend a monitor calibration tool first and foremost!

**Marc Sabatella** · 06-24-2009, 09:56 PM

Also note if you're using the "D-range" function of the camera and shooting RAW, third-party programs like Lightroom or Photoshop may not be able to handle / process the images as D-range is intended to work.

Riverlady · 06-25-2009, 05:27 AM

Originally Posted by Marc Sabatella

Also note if you're using the "D-range" function of the camera and shooting RAW, third-party programs like Lightroom or Photoshop may not be able to handle / process the images as D-range is intended to work.

Marc, could you elaborate a little more on this? This is something I've not heard about elsewhere. How does D-range work anyway?

I've also encountered this problem... while I'm sure monitor calibration is one ideal solution, the most important thing to do immediately is to check the histogram religiously rather than relying on the camera LCD image. You also can change the LCD brightness and I did that, actually turned it down to about -6 in order to match my computer screen since it was always tricking me... but since summer has begun and it is so bright out I can barely make out the LCD so I had to reset it to normal. The histogram is the solution IMHO.

**Marc Sabatella** · 06-25-2009, 12:52 PM

D-range works by deliberately shooting underexposed and then pushing the shadow levels brighter in during the image processing - either in camera when shooting JPEG or in PPL when shooting RAW. Third party RAW converters won't necessarily know they need to brighten the shadows. I have heard that when shooting DNG, that info might be encoded somehow, but it does not seem to be for PEF, at least not in a way that is "automatic", as I have verified that when using D-range, the camera-generated preview looks *entirely* different from the output of the RAW processing program I use (ACDSee Pro). Whereas it normally looks only "slightly" different.

Darthan · 06-27-2009, 09:17 AM

Thanks for the help. I checked my settings and the problem was that I had my screen set to +7 I set it back to normal and it maches whats on the monitor a bit more. I also switched on the histogram wich makes a big diffrence now I can see where things went wrong with the picture. My monitor is a piece of crap and will be getting a new better one.

Thanks

Kevin