Light/Dark, Dark/Light, Never fully light

[frnak]

Here's a problem that I've gotten into when I went into photography. Take a look at the picture.



To the seeing eye, the room and outside are perfectly lit. In fact, the room should be white!
I understand that this has to do with metering, and I've taken this with Evaluative metering. I also understand Exposure Comp, but turning up the Exposure causes outside to be blindingly white, while the inside is nicely exposed.

My question is...is this a natural thing for DSLR to confuse lighting? Or am I doing it wrong.

Thanks for the suggestions.

P.S. Using 500D with kit lens

[i speak in math]

Yes, normal. This issue is with your exposure, not lighting, btw. Your camera can only display a range of light and darks. For instance, outside, it is very bright. If you took your camera outside and took a picture, it might use the sunny 16 rule and change to ISO 100, 1/100 and f/16. Inside, your camera might try to use ISO 800, 1/10 and f/2.8. These are some mighty changes to the exposure. One very bright and one very dark. Your camera can't display that many changes in brightness.

You can choose which to expose for by changing your metering mode. If you meter so that the inside of the room looks good, the outside will be far too bright and will only show as white. If you meter so the outside looks exposed correctly, the inside will be black. Too much dynamic range. Some sensors have more dynamic range than others, but none will be able to expose both of those light levels the way you want.

You have a few choices:

*HDR is a technique of shooting exposed for several light levels, like inside and outside and blending the two later on the computer so that they are both exposed correctly in the final photo.

*You can bounce a flash to light the inside of the room so much that it is closer to the brightness of the outside. This lowers the dynamic range of the scene so that your camera can expose for both of these brightness levels without extra PP software later.

*Or you can shoot how you did in your examples, which I don't see a problem with. The one on the right looks really nice actually. The little bit of light leaves hints as to what the objects in the room are.

[IABoomer]

The issue is dynamic range, and it's normal in all cameras, not just DSLRs. Your eye is capable of processing a wider range between bright and dark in one viewing than your camera. This is why the scene looks even and bright to you, but shows up as varying in light/dark to the camera.

As the mathy one explained above, you can try to overcome this using HDR techniques like bracketing shots, which will increase the range between high and low light and allow you to blend them together to get something closer to what your eye sees.

[frnak]

Excellent. Thank you so much for the in depth explanation!

[111t]

Originally Posted by i speak in math

...These are some mighty changes to the exposure. One very bright and one very dark....

This has been a 'down side' of the transition to digital. Print film, though still governed by essentially the same rules of exposure would allow an acceptable print over a much wider range. Some of the popular 400 and 800 iso films were capable of producing printable images from 2 stops under to 4 stops over the ideal exposure. In fact, those single use cameras relied on this fact as there was no exposure adjustment whatsoever. The situation you illustrated would likely still be an issue with that print film as well. Shooting digital is much more akin to shooting slide film in terms of the need to keep everything in a similar exposure ballpark. The main advantage of digital of course is that you get to see the exposure right after taking the photo. So if the exposure is way off, you can change it. In your situation the outside looks about right so, as has been suggested, a bounced flash could bring up the interior nicely.