EOS R Photos look darker on phone

[Ethan1]

When I take a picture it is light and it looks good but when I transfer it to my phone it comes out darker for canon eos r. Do you know why it would do this

[p4pictures]

There are a couple of camera settings that can cause this. 

1. Screen brightness turned up too much
2. Exposure simulation switched off

In the first case, check the setting on the "wrench" 2 menu. You'll find Disp. brightness, make sure it's around the central setting.

For the second, check the SHOOT3 menu and find Expo. simulation, if you have this set to disable, then the screen does not reflect the exposure you have set on the camera. The screen will just give you a normal view even if your camera exposure settings result in underexposed pictures. 

Before you transfer the pictures to your phone, review them on the camera, and display the histogram by pressing the INFO repeatedly to cycle through the various displays. If the histogram is all bunched up on the left then you probably have the exposure settings wrong. Check for things like exposure compensation, if it's set to a negative value then reset it to zero.

[Ethan1]

Thank you, I will check that!

[Danny]

Thanks for joining the conversation, Ethan1!

So that the Community can help you better, we need to know exactly which operating system is running on your mobile device (i.e. Android or iOS, and which version thereof). 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, click HERE search our knowledge base or find additional support options HERE.

Thanks and have a great day!

[Ethan1]

iPhone 

[kvbarkley]

Also, are you shooting RAW or JPEG? The phone only shows the jpeg preview, which might not come out the same as the camera raw processing.

[Ethan1]

This is my EOS R Canon and it’s transferring the photos to my iPhone 15.

[Tronhard]

The problem with digital devices is that they are not created equal.  They use custom configurations that will change luminosity, contrast and colour depending on the brand and the settings.  It is for that reason the people who want accurate representations of images on monitors (for example), especially for post-processing, use Spyders that calibrate the display settings to a common standard, or get a monitor certified to do so.

A good way to figure out if your images are actually dark is to look at the display of the histogram that is created for every image and displayed on the camera LCD via either the DISP or INFO button.  It gives you a very accurate display of the exposure degree distribution within an image, as per these examples.

How to read a histogram

It's a good tool to tell you if your camera is consistently under or over exposing.  For example, try an experiment of shooting a contrasty but mostly mid-toned scene and check out what the histogram indicates.  Then try varying the exposure of the same scene, either with the EV dial or in M mode and see how the histogram changes.

[Ethan1]

Thank you so much for the information!