Pictures coming out dark when transferred to computer?

Hi all,

I've had this question for a really long time and can't find an answer for it. A couple years ago I got a refurb SD850 and everything worked great. Then one day I noticed when I transferred my pictures to my desktop computer they looked kind of dark, substantially darker than they looked on my camera's lcd screen. From that day on whenever I transferred my pictures to my desktop the pictures on the computer were always a lot darker than they looked on my camera's lcd, on which they looked fine.

Now I've got a brand new SX130 and it's the same problem from the outset. Whenever I view the pictures on my laptop they always look a lot darker than they look on my camera's lcd. I didn't even install the photo transfer software on my computer to see if that might be the problem, instead I just take the sd card out of my camera and put it in my laptop's sd slot, but the pics are still dark. Two different cameras and two different computers- one camera (sd850) worked great for a while before the pictures started being darker on the computer and the other's (sx130) pics were dark on the computer from the outset, with both of the cameras' lcd screens showing the pictures looking great. There's no connection between the cameras or between the laptop/desktop.

I've looked around online for an answer and haven't been able to find one but I have seen several people asking this exact same question. One of the answers I've seen people offer is that it might have something to do with screen brightness or gamma but I don't think that's the problem for several reasons- reason one is that if it were screen brightness or gamma then why would two unconnected computers, one laptop and one desktop, both have the same issue? Reason two is if it were screen brightness or gamma, why would it only affect my pictures and not every picture I look at online? Reason three is if it were screen brightness/gamma, why would the pictures look great when I first got the first camera (sd850) and then all of the sudden start looking dark when I never did anything to the screen?

Basically even if the picture looks great on the camera's lcd screen, when I transfer it to my computer the picture almost looks like the camera is wearing sunglasses. If I use flash it's a little better, ie you can see what's in the picture but it's still a long way from what it looks like on the camera's lcd.

Thanks a bunch and any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks again,
J

See here. The image on your camera's LCD is not the best way to judge picture quality or exposure.

Are you sure it is your pictures and not the monitor that is too dark? If you post a few pictures up here we can tell you if the pictures are underexposed or not.