[autotom45]

Hello everyone,
I am somewhat new to photography having had a brief encounter with a Pentax K10D.
I recently bought a Pentax Kr and took some photo's which appeared a tad on the dark side when taken in auto, was also the same when I took some pics of a half marathon.
Any ideas would be a great help, I am presuming it is my photo taking rather than a fault with the camera.

[Bill_R]

Hello everyone,
I am somewhat new to photography having had a brief encounter with a Pentax K10D.
I recently bought a Pentax Kr and took some photo's which appeared a tad on the dark side when taken in auto, was also the same when I took some pics of a half marathon.
Any ideas would be a great help, I am presuming it is my photo taking rather than a fault with the camera.

Post some images with EXIF info intact so others can possibly see the problem.

[gp1806]

I have found that dark images are not much of a problem from the K-R, unless they are very dark. The K-R has a lot of dynamic range and images can be 'pushed' in PP to brighten up quite well. Have you tried to do this in your computer?

[autotom45]

Thanks for the replies.

Attached is one of the photo's. By then the day was sunny, but this did not show on the photo.

Info:
1/250 F5.6 ISO 200

Attached Images

 

[ions]

nope, that does not help - we need photo with full exif.

[Bill_R]

Full EXIF will help.
Just looking at the histogram it is a bit cut off up high. That's easy to fix but the EXIF might indicate what caused it.

[autotom45]

Thanks Bill

I don't mean to be a dummy, but what is the EXIF and where will I find it.

[Bill_R]

Thanks Bill

I don't mean to be a dummy, but what is the EXIF and where will I find it.

It's the full info about the camera settings when you took the photo that is usually saved with the file. Unfortunately, when you save the image in some applications it can be stripped out. It was possibly stripped when you resized it for here or if you have done some editing in another application then saved the original file.
Pentax Digital Camera Utility 4 (with the update for jpg - latest version) will allow the original to be resized to post here while retaining the exif (assuming the original still has exif info). Just use File, Save As then click on Change Image Size to resize it.

One way (among many) to see the exif info is to open the file in Pentax Digital Camera Utility 4 and look in the Image Data pane.

Edit: I just attached a file resized a lot in PDCU 4 to show - it should show the exif info. You don't need to resize that small.

[Sekul]

Well, i had a similar problem at first, then i knew what was wrong.
I was trying to take a shot of my running dog so i took of the camera from my face y begin to shot several pictures in a burst, all of them were severely underexposed, i was ready to ask here in the forum but i did a last test before asking and bingo, the problem was light enter in the camera by the viewfinder, i covered the viewfinder with my finger and the exposure was ok again

hope this help

[asp1880]

Attached is one of the photo's. By then the day was sunny, but this did not show on the photo.

It looks a little dark, I suppose. Without the full EXIF data , I must rely on my psychic powers, which tell me that you had the camera in multisegment metering mode . The camera then tries to expose the background and the person equally well, and that yields a darkish image because the sky is so much brighter than the person.

There are four solutions:
1. remember to use fill flash. This works for close subjects.
2. remember to use the exposure compensation button. This always works but might overexpose the sky.
3. remember to change to centerweighted metering. This works for middletoned subjects that fill the center of the frame, like portraits.
4. Brighten it on the computer afterwards (in post processing, as they say).

Sincerely,
--Anders.