Newbie Question (dark images on monitor)

[boltsfan21]

Hello,

I just bought a Digital Rebel. After I take photos, I view them on my computer using a CF card reader. All the photos look underexposed. When I view the photos on the camera, they look fine. I also connected the camera to the computer to view the photos and they looked underexposed. I was practicing taking photos of lightning last night. The images on the camera looked fine, but when viewed on the computer, they are completely black. Out of curiosity, I printed one of the photos that were black on the monitor and it came out fine. Is there something I need to do with the computer monitor? Thanks.

D.N.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Boltsfan,
Welcome to the forum :)

Lesson one,. ;) When posting a question,. please indicate in the thread title the nature fo the question,. this will make it much easier for you to get the answer you need,. (I took the liberty of editing your title to reflect the question)

Also,. I think you are heading in the right direction with figuring this out,. the Cameras LCD and your prints seem to indicate that the problem lies in your display,. not in the camera,.

...therefor I have moved this thread to "Post Processing" where we tend to dicuss issues of this nature.

I do think it is your display that is the issue,. could you tell us what you are using? Monitor, graphics card etc...

Try bumping up the brightness and adjustng the contrast. You definately want to get your disply giving a reasonable representation of your images asap,. otherwise any changes you make in an image editor will prove detrimental.

[boltsfan21]

Sorry for posting in the wrong area. Thank you for moving my post. I'm using a Dell monitor (not flat screen) E773c. My graphics card is a NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200. I am shooting in JPEG on the highest quality. When I scan slides, everything on the monitor is fine. I was using a friends Minolta Dimage Z1 digital camera for a few months. The photos viewed with the camera and on the computer were fine. I don't know what's going on with the Digital Rebel. I can't even edit right now. Thanks for the help. I'm at work, so I'll try to adjust the contrast and brightness when I get home. Thanks.

D.N.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Hmm... the additional info you have regarding the other camera and scanned files has me less confident that the monitor is the issue?

Now I'm very unsure...

I'm afraid this means more questions :lol:

What software are you viewing the images with?

Do you have a second utility you can try to use to view the images?

[Flagpole]

G'day!

I am not a pro in this by any means but could you plase post an example on this forum? It would be interesting to see the histogram of the image. As a general rule most LCD on camera will display the image much lighter/brighter than a monitor. This has to do with a fact that LCD are backlit, so your most reliable indicator is the histogram of the image not LCD display. I've learn it hard way when I shot some indoor family pics and all of them came out underexposed. Luckily I shot them in RAW so they were all salvagable.

Flagpole

[boltsfan21]

Thanks for the responses. I did some adjustment to the brightness and it seems to have helped. After that, I opened an image using Photoshop Elements 2.0, Microsoft Picture It Express, and File Viewer Utility (software that came with the Rebel) to compare. The image in PS seemed to be fine. The image in Picture It and File Viewer Utility was a little darker. I printed the photo with each utility and all three photos matched the photo viewed with Photoshop. Is this normal that the same picture can look darker/brighter using different utilities? As for the LCD display, the photo the camera caputures is usually what you see while viewing on a computer monitor, not the LCD? Sorry for the stupid questions.

D.N.

[mbze430]

I don't trust the LCD display. Sometimes I don't even trust the histrogram on the camera. At least not the one on my 20D. Maybe the 1D might be a little better???

anyway, without a ICC workflow, its almost impossible to get exact prints. But this is only if you are doing critical work.

[wintermute76]

My Sony F707 does the same thing. It'll look fine on the camera, but in reality it's underexposed a bit. More only on extremely low light situations where I" use manual settings.

It's one of the reasons I'm looking at stepping up to a EOS 20D.

[Aethyr]

The contrast on the LCD on your camera might be a little on the high side, which would make photos appear brighter on your camera than they look on your computer monitor. Maybe you could try messing with the brightness/contrast settings on the camera itself until it matches what you see on your monitor or what you print out, so you can get a better idea of what the photo is actually going to look like when you transfer it to your computer.