Photo is dark in day light

[angel04chanu]

Hello,

I'm new to photography,

today morning i took a photo of a squirrel in a tree, but the photo is dark why?

I used Nikon D3000 with 50 - 200mm lens, the subject is approxi 15 to 18 yards.

used aperture mode triede with all the F numbers, but still i did not got any nice pic.

Location is covered with houses and trees but has good light.

please give you comments and solution on this.

Appreciate you feedback.

Regards
Chan

[NgaiHill]

Can you post an example of your photo? It would help with giving advice.

[BigFuzzy]

Yeah example.. no way to tell with your description.

Any chance you messed with the exposure compensation and put it at -3 or something?

So yeah... post a pic with the exif data, and I'm pretty sure someone will be able to tell you exactly what went wrong.

[WAD]

Were you shooting into the Sun? You will get this effect using an auto exposure mode if shooting directly or mostly directly into the Sun as it will evaluate the scene with the bright light and underexpose your subject.

[angel04chanu]

I have attached the photo.....pls look into it.

[FranDaMan]

It did exactly what WAD said.
Your metering tried to expose for the background.
Your background exposure looks pretty good.

This is a case where you should be using spot metering. Then you can meter for the subject.

[angel04chanu]

thank you all for the response....

@ BigFuzzy : I did not change exposure conpensation, it is in 0

@WAD : I'm trying to shoot the squriell on the tree, but it looks very dark.

@FranDaMan : What is SPOT METERING? How to use that?

If i use the spot metering, will the subject look good as background? as you said.



Thanks,
Chan

[BigFuzzy]

Hi Chan,
though I agree it's likely a exposure issue with thecamera having a difficult time with the brighter background.. but the background's not soooo bright that I would expect this sort of exposure.

Were you using some sort of manual setting? Do you, by chance, have the exif info?

Do you recall if the flash fired and whether or not your finger was over the flash or anything like that?

Though, in the end, I think it's a metering issue with the camera trying to meter for the bright parts, there is enough of the dark parts for me to think it should have done a better job of brightening those dark areas.
Hmmm..

[angel04chanu]

Hi BigFuzzy

I used the Aperature mode.
i did not use flash and flash did not fired.
ISO is in 100
-------------

Could you tell me how to take this kind of pic very effectively.
In what mode i should shoot?
Before clicking, what are the setting need to be checked?

Thanks,
Chan

[jamesev]

How are going to get the squirrel back to pose for you when you re-compose the shot with spot metering?