topic Re: Pictures Very Dark in EOS DSLR & Mirrorless Cameras

Pictures Very Dark

scusick — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 13:09:55 GMT

Hello

I am a father who takes pictures of his 4 kids, I am no where near a professional.

That said, I have always used the Auto setting on the camera. Up to 2 weeks ago, this worked perfectly fine. In the last 2 weeks every other picture is very dark. The ones that are not dark, are perfect. So weird. So dark i can not even use. However I am 100% sure the flash is going off.

I am curious if one of my kids maybe touched a setting?

Any Ideas?

Thanks

Steve

Re: Pictures Very Dark

Danny — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 13:22:30 GMT

Hi, Steve!

So that the Community can help you better, we will need to know exactly which Canon camera model you're using. That, and any other details you'd like to give will help the Community better understand your issue!

If this is a time-sensitive matter, our US-based technical support team is standing by, ready to help 24/7 via Email at http://bit.ly/EmailCanon or by phone at 1-800-OK-CANON (1-800-652-2666) weekdays between 8 AM and midnight ET (5 AM to 9 PM PT) and Saturdays from 10 AM to 8 PM ET (7 AM to 5 PM PT).

Thanks and have a great day!

Re: Pictures Very Dark

scusick — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 13:40:22 GMT

EOS Rebel T3i

The only real details are every other picture is dark. I am using the auto setting A+. I see the flash working.

Thanks in advance for your support

Steve

Re: Pictures Very Dark

ebiggs1 — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 13:45:00 GMT

"I am curious if one of my kids maybe touched a setting?

Any Ideas?" Yes of course!

Reset the camera. In the Menu clear all settings. But I suspect the flash is not going off on all your shots. If the room is dark enough it takes some time for it to recharge. If you shoot rather quickly, the flash may not have had time enough to charge.

Sometimes using the Green Square you can confuse it, if it saw a brigth light in the room and assummed it was all that way.

Examples would be nice if you could u/l a couple (good and bad) with exif intatct.

Re: Pictures Very Dark

scusick — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 14:11:41 GMT

I cant find the reset setting in the Menu if you can assist please.

I can 100% see the flash go. maybe it igoes, but not working?

and this worked perfectly for months, and all of a sudden it changed.

Another interesting thing I just noticed. The good ones are like 7 and 8 MB. The bad ones are only 3-4 MB. Could that be a hint as to the problem?

Let me know if these attachment helps.

Thanks in advance

Steve

Re: Pictures Very Dark

TCampbell — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 15:59:30 GMT

It is difficult to be specific without inspecting the images, but your comment that "every other photo" is dark makes me wonder if you haven't enabled an exposure "bracketing" feature.

Bracketing is something we did in film days (take the exposure you think correct, but also take the same image exposing a stop higher and a stop lower). It's also done with digital cameras today as these can be used for form HDR images (HDR = High Dynamic Range). Usually three shots are taken but on some cameras allow for more than 3.

The thing is... using full auto mode (A+) usually restricts many advanced features of the camera (to avoid this situation... the notion that some setting might have been accidentally changed and the user does not know how to change it back... using A+ mode typically locks out those settings and just does a simple straight shot.)

It would be helpful to see an example of the images ... but with all of the exposure information. When you upload an image to the Canon community forums, the exposure information (normally embedded within the image) is stripped away. Some external photo gallery sites leave the information in the image (Flickr strips it from the image, but saves it seperately so that it can still be viewed.) This would help us understand what your camera was really doing and we might be able to identify why some of the images are underexposed.

Re: Pictures Very Dark

ebiggs1 — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 16:14:31 GMT

Steve,

Please, "Examples would be nice if you could u/l a couple (good and bad) with exif intatct."

Your camera may just have a "Clear All Settings" selection. And a "Clear All Personal Settings" selection. Both, or either, will be in the Tools tab.

Re: Pictures Very Dark

scusick — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 16:48:25 GMT

Can you see them here?

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B0OJT7Y2myrQfk9FNkdQNktzaEVQN3lzY3NucURTWXhmNDhEdGxtckVGR2NnOUMxTjRsTkU&usp=sharing

The different size makes me think that has something to do with it.

Re: Pictures Very Dark

ebiggs1 — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 17:07:19 GMT

Yes I can see them but the exif has been stripped like Tim Campbell indicated it could be. Without it it really isn't anything but a few guesses.

Can you u/l directly yo this forum? Do you have a post editor on your computer? It may have come free with the camera.

Re: Pictures Very Dark

scusick — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 17:19:44 GMT

How about i just list the info, maybe that will work.

I can not thank you all enough for all this help!

BAD:

Camera:	Canon EOS REBEL T3i
Lens:	Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II Shot at 28 mm (shot wide open)
Exposure:	Auto exposure, Program AE, 1/64 sec, f/4, ISO 400
Flash:	On, Fired
Focus:	AI Focus AF, with a depth of field of from 1.82 m to 1.13 m. AF Area Mode: Auto
Date:	July 28, 2015 8:01:37AM (timezone not specified) (2 hours, 15 minutes, 22 seconds ago, assuming image timezone of US Pacific)
File:	5,184 × 3,456 JPEG (17.9 megapixels) 3,809,645 bytes (3.6 megabytes)
Color Encoding:	WARNING: Color space tagged as sRGB, without an embedded color profile. Windows and Mac browsers and apps treat the colors randomly.

Good

Camera:	Canon EOS REBEL T3i
Lens:	Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II Shot at 28 mm (shot wide open)
Exposure:	Auto exposure, Program AE, 1/64 sec, f/4, ISO 400
Flash:	On, Fired
Focus:	AI Focus AF, with a depth of field of from 1.82 m to 1.13 m. AF Area Mode: Auto
Date:	July 28, 2015 8:01:36AM (timezone not specified) (2 hours, 16 minutes, 59 seconds ago, assuming image timezone of US Pacific)
File:	5,184 × 3,456 JPEG (17.9 megapixels) 7,560,691 bytes (7.2 megabytes)
Color Encoding:	WARNING: Color space tagged as sRGB, without an embedded color profile. Windows and Mac browsers and apps treat the colors randomly.

Re: Pictures Very Dark

TCampbell — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 18:37:49 GMT

Bizarre... they both show the identical exposure settings of:

Auto exposure, Program AE, 1/64 sec, f/4, ISO 400.

But then in the filesize... both indicate same resolution & JPEG and "17.9 megapixels"... but one indicates it saved to disk at 3.6 MB and the other saved to disk at 7.2 MB. That part seems a bit odd.

But as the exposure data reads the same, then it should look the same (unless the lighting was changing on you between shots.) Were you in a sitatuion where lights were changing?

One other possibility...

It's possible to point the camera at one area, half-press (and hold) the shutter button (this locks in the metering) and then point the camera at a different subject before fully pressing the shutter to take the shot. If you were do this, then you'd get the "metering" locked in from the first subject.

Re: Pictures Very Dark

scusick — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 19:21:00 GMT

I agree. Totaly the same except file size.

what is really throwing me for a loop, is this just started happening out of no where. This totally worked fine, but a week or 2 ago, this started.

None of the other suggestions have worked yet.

Thanks again for all the help.

Steve

Re: Pictures Very Dark

RobertTheFat — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 19:22:49 GMT

@TCampbell wrote:
Bizarre... they both show the identical exposure settings of:

Auto exposure, Program AE, 1/64 sec, f/4, ISO 400.

But then in the filesize... both indicate same resolution & JPEG and "17.9 megapixels"... but one indicates it saved to disk at 3.6 MB and the other saved to disk at 7.2 MB. That part seems a bit odd.

But as the exposure data reads the same, then it should look the same (unless the lighting was changing on you between shots.) Were you in a sitatuion where lights were changing?

That could happen if the light source is low-persistence fluorescent bulbs on alternating current. Note that the shutter speed is comparable to the AC frequency (usually 60 Hz in North America, 50 Hz in much of the rest of the world). When a fixture has two or three tubes, electricians usually try to wire them out of phase to lessen the effect, but that's not always feasible. It's a longshot explanation, but not entirely improbable.

Re: Pictures Very Dark

ebiggs1 — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 22:05:01 GMT

"None of the other suggestions have worked yet."

And none of these are going to work either. There is something else going on. But we need to do the most logcial ones first.

Get a new high quality SD card. Format it in the camera. A new battery might be a good idea, too. Canon of course.

Do go outside where there will be plenty of light. Take some shots. No flash.

If your camera requires service, Canon is going to do this so you might as well save them from doing it. Right?

It is obivious the camera thinks it has done its job. The fact the files are different sizes is because there is different content in each.

Do the daylight test with a new SD card. Seeing the same results, take it in for service with the lens.

Re: Pictures Very Dark

amfoto1 — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 15:34:37 GMT

....

That said, I have always used the Auto setting on the camera. Up to 2 weeks ago, this worked perfectly fine. In the last 2 weeks every other picture is very dark. The ones that are not dark, are perfect. So weird. So dark i can not even use. However I am 100% sure the flash is going off.
...

I am assuming you are using the camera's built in flash for all your shots.

That being the case, since "every other picture" is dark, it might just be that the flash is not fully recycled ("recharged") before you take the "dark" shot. This could be because the camera's battery is getting older, less efficient than it was originally (since the built in flash uses the camera's main battery for power... one of the things I hate about built in flashes!).

Simply shooting too fast with flash can cause underexposure issues. But you might speed things up a little by getting and using a new battery.

There may be a setting in the camera that allow or prevent the camera from firing when the flash is insufficiently charged up. If allowed, it would be entirely possible that some of the images might be underexposed.

I don't think the different file sizes means anything... in digital images white is "all data" and black is "no data"... so an extremely underexposed image would naturally end up as a much smaller file than one that's properly exposed.

Re: Pictures Very Dark

RobertTheFat — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 17:04:45 GMT

@scusick wrote:
I cant find the reset setting in the Menu if you can assist please.

I can 100% see the flash go. maybe it igoes, but not working?

and this worked perfectly for months, and all of a sudden it changed.

Another interesting thing I just noticed. The good ones are like 7 and 8 MB. The bad ones are only 3-4 MB. Could that be a hint as to the problem?

Let me know if these attachment helps.

Thanks in advance
Steve

The file size discrepancy is a consequence of the problem, but says nothing about its cause. You're evidently shooting JPEG images, and the algorithm that translates the RAW capture into JPEG format uses data compression when it can. When an image is monochromatic and/or has little detail, the compression is more efficient. Since an image that's nearly all black has little detail, the result is a smaller file.

Re: Pictures Very Dark

JonKline — Thu, 30 Jul 2015 23:24:29 GMT

NERD ALERT

https://www.google.com/patents/US6456797

TL;DR -

Canon has patents on a system of charging the flash capacitors in parallel. So every other flash alternates from a different electrical "side." One of your sides is not charging properly, and only putting out maybe ~10% of what it should.

The upshot: send the camera in for service, for variances in flash output.