skinnyboy wrote in post #11246005
I have been trying relentlessly to figure out what is the problem item here. Ive never had problems with this with my past canon cameras or printers. I have have a Canon T1 Camera and a Canon Pro9000 Printer. Im using a 1080 LG LCD tv as a Monitor. I cannot print one picture that looks like anything on my camera or my monitor. They come out horribly dark and the color is from two different worlds. Ive tried messing with the tvs color controls till i get close to the picture that spits out of the printer..but then you cant even see things on the monitor. So im trying to figure out if its the Camera or printer thats screwing up. I was going to try to bring an SD card to a place and have them print out a pic..to make sure its not the camera..any suggestions?
skinnyboy wrote in post #11250361i printed directly from the camera to printer..is the display picture on the camera supposed to be brighter and a lighter color? I thought the pic in the camera display is generally the way its supposed to look?? When i printed not using the monitor..i think it seemed better , but was still darker and way more darker red toned. I even turned down the brightness on the camera lcd and it still looked lighter and a more golden tone on the camera. So im not sure if its the camera or printer..im thinkin more the printer..or just that i dont know what the hell im doin. This lcd tv was the first time i didnt use a computer monitor...so i guess i should go back to one huh? Any suggestions on a decent one i can just use for my pics that wont cost an arm an a leg? i have a pretty new hp pc..
So, just to get this clear -- you say you are printing directly from the camera and that you are viewing on a TV -- is that with the camera plugged in to the TV or are you using the TV plugged into your HP PC? Is this a laptop or desktop?
As far as the camera LCD, that is not the best way of judging image brightness for Direct Print unless you really learn what you are dealing with. A valuable tool would be the camera Histogram. This will take some experimenting on your part, but you can use the histogram to compare with the print brightness and get an idea of how an image should come across in the print -- generally, the more of an image you can get in the range of the middle to the right of the histogram, the brighter the print will be. So, try getting one of the images that have printed dark to show up in your camera preview and then press the Info button to show the histogram. If the histogram curve tends toward the left side that means darker tones. Then, try to capture an image in which you adjust your exposure settings until the histogram curve ranges mostly around the center to the right side (but not jammed against the right side) and print out that one -- your print should come out pretty nice. And, if your camera has live view, you can turn it on and turn Exposure Simulation on, and be able to set up some of your shots using the histogram and also the image preview to get an idea of how these two work together before taking a shot.
If that test doesn't work, you may have some problem with the printer processing the pics and may need to adjust the printer, but how you might do that for Direct Print (camera to printer) is something you'd have to find out from the printer docs or online -- I don't have a Canon printer to even try this
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But, for most things, I'd work through your PC to print, simply because it gives you a chance to review your shots with a real monitor and make adjustments as needed. As you've seen, it can be normal (and frustrating) to try to print shots right out of the camera, thinking that they "look good" and end up with dark prints. So, first learn to "get it right in the camera" using the histogram properly, and then learn to work with editing software and your PC to touch things up.
