[gaynor2112]

at this point I am really only using auto setting. took a seminar and have some high school photography experience 25 years ago to get back to using some of the manual settings.

in auto all of my outdoor shots are so bright they are almost white. I just reset my default settings but it did not help much. What should I look to change? any help would be great. Thanks, Ryan

[Adam]

Can you post a sample photo with exif intact?

Also, make sure your camera is set to matrix metering rather than spot or center-weighted.

[jatrax]

And mentioning what camera and lens you have would help too.

[DeadJohn]

Overexposed images could be settings or a stuck aperture. +1 that we need to know which camera and lens, plus a sample image.

[sterretje]

This assumes you use the kit-lens (18-55) and it can be used to check the aperture mechanism in the lens and the aperture activation mechanism in the camera.

Switch to Av, set the aperture to f/8 or f/9.5 and take a picture of yourself. Keep the camera at arm length from yourself, point the lens towards you and look in the lens; you should see a small circle in the center of the lens. Take a picture while looking in the lens; do you see the small circle inside the lens changing while the picture is taken? If so, your aperture mechanism in the lens and the activation in the camera are OK; if not, the aperture mechanism in the lens and / or the activation in the camera is broken.

If the aperture works OK, we can check other settings. As the others said, post a resized picture with EXIF intact.

[TaoMaas]

My first thought was that your ISO was set so high that there was no aperture/shutter speed combo on the camera that could make a proper exposure. But if you reset to the default settings, that should have cured that, I would think.

[FrankC]

My first inclination was that your exposure compensation was probably set to +3.