Pictures problems with Olympus C-7000 Zoom camera

ken123

Premium Member
On vacation now and taking pics that are coming out dark. See sample. All of the settings, WB, saturation, contrast are on the default settings of zero. WB is set for sunny day. Have tried the camera on fully auto settings and shutter priority. With shutter priority, I set the speed at a fast setting since these are fast moving subjects. Trying to take pics with the sun to my back so the subject gets the sun. Other photos are even darker than this. Any ideas, is there a setting that I should adjust??

P7310492.jpg
 
What's the aperture and ISO set at? Do you have the exposure compensation messed with at all?
 
I was using the auto setting so the camera selected both the speed and aperture. I tried manually setting the speed and let the camera select the aperture but I got the same results. Should I set the speed and aperture manually for both? Would be tuff to do on a boat since the sun is always changing position.
 
I'm use to using a film camera with 100, 200 or 400 speed film. What ISO setting should be used in a bright light setting? Still getting use to this digital camera.
 
Try Aperture priority

2.8 f
Auto WB
Auto exposure
ISO 100

I have a c-740UZ and those are the settings I use for most outdoor stuff.
 
Did you check the exposure compensation? It should look like E/V + or -. ISO of 80 would be a fairly slow shutter speed, try at 200 or 400 and see what happens. That should speed up your shutter speed giving you a more clear shot, but the trade off is that you may get a little grain depending on the camera. Still strange how the pictures come out dark when you use the auto settings. Have you messed with the metering?
 
Your camera is clearly underexposing the picture. That's the easy part. So, we need to figure out if it's because of a setting, or if the metering is just coming out wrong.

There are a few different metering algorithms - average, spot, center weighted, matrix, etc. In varying ways, the camera's light meter looks at the scene, determines how light or dark it is, and selects a shutter/aperture combination that it thinks will be the proper exposure.

I suspect that your camera is using a metering mode that uses only the center area to determine exposure. The white spray and skin colors would dominate the evaluation. The camera always tries to meter the scene towards a neutral grey. If the metering algorithm thinks the scene is light, it will make it darker so that the average is grey (like your spray turned out).

See what other metering modes are available in your camera, and if any of those give better results.


Also, check if you have exposure compoensation turned on. This usually reads as numbers from -2 to +2 in 1/3 steps. 0 allows the camera to make the decision, any negative compensation darkens the photo, positive lightens it. If you have negative compensation, dial it back to 0. If it's at zero, you could try boosting it to +1 or +2 and see how much that helps. More than likely, if it's at 0 now, the metering mode needs to be changed.
 
Or, just adjust it in Photoshop to brighten up the picture a bit. But the easy way would to use the RAW format on your camera and process them that way. Here is 10 seconds in PS.

P7310492.jpg
 
We were just out in the boat. Set it to manual, ISO=200, shutter=1/1600, f4.6, wb=auto. Pics came out pretty good. WB=auto. Did not touch the metering. Camera is set for multimetering which checks the subject at 8 different points. I have 3 choices for metering, ESP, spot or multimetering.

Also found a 'Scene' selection which lets me select portrait, sports or other settings. I guess these set the camera at preselected settings, will have to try this.

Have it set for SQ. I do have a RAW setting.
 
Did not try raw yet. Just took these pictures in manual mode, ISO 200, shutter=1/1600, F5.6 or 4.?. Think it's 640x480, running low on memory now. Tried the built-in 'Scene' mode with fast subjects, pics came in under exposed. Cleary the camera underexposes everything in auto selected modes.

P8020705.jpg
 
While I'm reading through the manual again, does anyone know if it's possible to change something in the auto settings so I can use these settings like I am supposed to?
 
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