Originally posted by audiobomber I assume the lens is the 18-55mm? My copy underexposes like this.
This shot is *not* really underexposed in the technical sense - it averages out to a little darker than an 18% gray card, exactly as it should. However, it is a good example of a scene for which positive compensation would indeed be likely to yield a more aesthetically pleasing picture in most people's subjective opinion.
I'd personally have pushed the exposure half a stop in the camera, which may actually have clipped some highlights, but only barely. Then I'd have gone in and recovered the highlights if necessary in PP (I shoot RAW, so this would be possible - not so much so with JPEG). Then I'd look to see if I needed to tweak the curves to improve contrast. I do this quite a bit, but to my eye, the OP went a little too far.
In any case, assuming the the exact exposure and curves produced by the camera are the best possible results is foolish. Use out-of-camera JPEG if you like for the sake of convenience, but they'll *never* be optimal on any camera, because this stuff is just far too subjective.