D50 underexposure

[yuemingzhang]

Hi all,
This is my first post, and I am new to DSLR world.

I found my Nikon D50 underexposure for indoor shooting when flash isn't used.

I mound my camera on a tripod, and set it to aperture priority mode, and use timer to reduce shake. I assme that the camera should adjust the shutter speed to ensure the proper exposue, but the results were dispointing. I shot in Raw mode.

All histograms are shifted to the left in all meter mode. I checked Exposure Compensation, and it's normal. I tried two lens, and the results are the same.

Outdoor shooting works just fine.

Is this the expected result? Do I miss anything?

Thank you in advance.

Ming

[Nicole]

Would it be possible for you to post an example here with the EXIF information? Or upload the photo to Flickr and post a link?

You seem to have checked all the things I would (e.g. exposure compensation, metering mode...) Have you tried changing your metering mode to see if that changes the shot being underexposed?

[yuemingzhang]

Hi Nicole,
Thanks for the quick reply. Here are the links to two photos. I shot in Raw, and converted them from .NEF to .JPG in photoshop Camera Raw. I turned off exposure auto adjustment in the first one. You can clearly see that the first one is underexposured.

I use the default exposure auto adjustment suggested by Photoshop in the second one. You can see that PhotoShop suggest a 1.25 exposure compensation in the second one, and consequently the second one is a much better picture.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/59715191@N00/387611029/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59715191@N00/387611033/

Since I used Apeture Priority mode and mount the camer on a Tripole, I really don't understand why the camera didn't reduce the shutter speed when I took the picture.

Is it normal?

Thanks again.
Ming

[Nicole]

Ok, my first thought on this is that the reason that it underexposed everything except the zebra is because you were using Center Weighted Average metering. What this does is makes your camera try to expose the center of the image properly, while basically ignoring the rest of the image. Try using Matrix metering instead, and see if that makes a difference.

To me, it looks like the camera did properly expose for the zebra in the unadjusted shot. For more information on how metering modes effect your picture, try this article on Understanding Metering (http://photospot2004.blogspot.com/2004/11/understanding-metering.html). Hopefully that helps some. Depending on what you're trying to achieve, other metering modes may work better, so it might be a bit of trial and error.

As another note, you can also try putting your question to the D50 Flickr group (http://flickr.com/groups/nikond50/), they're a pretty helpful bunch as well :)

[yuemingzhang]

The link is the best explanation I've seen on metering topic. Thank you very much.

I've been playing with different meter mode with different background/subject (light background and dark subject, or dark background and light subjects). This is why I confused myself.

Thank you again.

Ming

[Nicole]

Glad that you found the link useful. That was the first link I ever found that actually helped me to understand what the various metering modes did :) Hopefully now you'll be able to get the results that you want from your camera :)