EOS M50 Pics Are Too Dark

[Far-Out-Dude]

First off let me say I am not a noob at this, I understand the settings and I have read the manual. It is also doing this with all lenses and the camera was just repair by Canon not long ago and has not been used much as I had foot surgery in Sept. foot got infected and I almost lost the foot so I have not been out photographing much.

Now for some reasons lately in Manual mode my pictures are turned out very dark unless I go all the way down to 4" which is much to slow for what I am trying to shoot and it is of course causing a blurred effect. I would normally take this picture at 1200 FPS when not on a tripod but when I try to do that the picture is jet black. Settings for this are as follows.  Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM Lens 400mm f5.6 1/200 ISO 100 No flash. I had lighting set for an overcast day. I am hoping it is just something I am forgetting because I have not been shooting much and not a problem with the lens.

Oh I put it in Aperture mode and the pictures are bright enough but it is setting ISO to 6400 every time. I have tried to reset the camera but it does not seem to be resetting as BBF is still on after I have reset the camera. I had lens brace against window of truck though not entirely steady as I could not reach the pool noodle I normally put on window and only had it on the light camera skin. Thank you for any help given.

One thing I realized I forgot to mention when I was laying in bed is if I push the shutter button halfway down everything will get brighter for just a second and then look dark again in the screen and the viewfinder.

[Far-Out-Dude]

P mode automatically selects the ISO for you though unless I have missed something. All the modes other that M that I found did that especially silent mode, that made pictures I could do nothing with. Unless I misunderstood something I read in the manual which knowing me is entirely likely.

[deebatman316]

ISO can be set manually or automatically in P (Program) mode.

[Far-Out-Dude]

Thank you, I know in the others it can't be, I would have continued using silent mode if it could have been set. Turned out the sound did not seem to bother the turkey or deer anyway.

[ebiggs1]

There is no way to make this sound better but you don't know how photographs are made and/or how to set up your camera. I guarantee you P mode would have done better on the first turkey in your sample picture than your M settings.

Lets get this solved. Try using P mode after you reset the camera fully. Complete reset plus custom settings too.

Select P mode and a reasonable ISO which you fix at that setting. Do not use Auto ISO at this point. However if you do want Auto ISO set a lower and a upper limit you can live with. ISO is a fight against proper exposure and grain.

All camera gear has its limits even the best high dollar gear. Darker shots are going to be more difficult and compromising. 

[Far-Out-Dude]

As I said, I have problems with numbers. That said why would this be an all of a sudden thing? I was not having the problem before while running in manual. I will always struggle with the numbers portion, there is no way around that, have not changed in 54 years of life. I have watched so many videos and read so many books but it simply will never stick. I will try your experiment but it is going to be a few days, my girlfriend fell three nights ago, refused to go to the ER until today and it turns out she broke her hip so right now dealing with her surgery and the aftermath is more important. By the way here are some other pictures I have taken. https://community.usa.canon.com/t5/Share-Your-Photos/Just-a-few-shots/td-p/460753

[ebiggs1]

Please don't be so stubborn and try P mode as I have outlined. Don't fight it. Who knows why all of a sudden things went south. That is not the question nor is it helping us fix it. Consider when you use P mode you don't have to deal with numbers much. At the times when P mode will not work for whatever reason, then you can try some sort of manual settings. But even them M mode is the last thing to try. Av mode should be the second thing after P mode and Tv after that. Way down and last is M mode.

Next time give it a go. Darker fix ISO around 1600 or 3200. Normal lighting fix it at 200. Simple.

[krahe]

I haven't looked through all the comments to see if this has been suggested before, but one strategy I use for low-light shots is to leverage the M50's resolution - which is overkill for most shots - by shooting wide with a quality, faster lens like the EF-M 22mm f/2, then crop later to the shot I want.

[Far-Out-Dude]

I am not sure what you mean by leverage the shots to be honest. There is simply no way a 22mm lens is going to get out far enough for wild turkey and I question it for most other wild animals. Though I do not know everything by a long shot.

[krahe]

Just as an example, here is a shot I took from the back row of an ice arena with the 22mm at 1/500 sec., f/2.8, ISO 2500:

and the same image cropped to 1994 x 1329 pixels, or 2.6mp:

If I had used a (zoom) lens that could have taken the cropped shot directly, I would have had to use a higher ISO and much slower shutter speed, probably resulting in a less clear shot.

[Far-Out-Dude]

While much better than I would have thought that is still not good enough, this was at 400mm on a moving target at about 30-50 yards, closer to 50 I do believe.