Never enough light

I have a D3400 that I bought almost 2 years ago. just after the warranty ran out, it seems I could not get enough light to take pictures. It seemed even when I had good light, I would have to slow the shutter speed way down to get the camera to have an effective exposure. If I was taking some landscape photos, I would set the f-stop to between 8 and 11 with an ISO of either 100 or 200 and I may have to set my shutter speed to maybe 1/80 or slower. This is on a nice bright day.
I sent the camera to a Nikon repair facility and they said they cleaned it and that is it. I got it back and it worked fine until this winter and it happened again. I really don't believe it was dirty, I am quite careful with it, I keep it in a bag and I think I take pretty good care of it.

I tried resetting all the setting, I update firmware the first time this happend with now glory.

Does anyone have any ideas? I really do not want to send it back in if I don't have to.

Thank you in advance!

Welcome to the forum. Do you have more than one lens? If so does the problem exist with all lenses or just one? Another thought is when you set the f-stop to say 5.6 does can you then increase your shutter speed? Anything else you can add to the way you are shooting?

Welcome aboard. Enjoy the ride.
We look forward to seeing more posts and samples of your work.

What Walt asked is very important.

Also, where do you live and what kind of bag are you storing the camera in? If it is a very humid environment, this could contribute to your issue. Also, which exposure mode are you using?

Yes, it is consistent with all my lenses, I actually had a friend at work bring in his 3300 and used his camera with my lens and his lens on my camera to compare. Set the two cameras to the same settings and my shutter speed requirement was much slower to attain a good exposure.

Yes if I open the f-stop up it does effect the shutter speed requirement, but it is still much too slow to be able to take good pictures.

Most of my photography is landscape and try some wildlife. This is not helping with that for sure.
When you ask about the way I shoot, do you mean as in manual, shutter priority or aperture priority. Normally manual.

I had it in the Nikon bag that came with the camera, now I have it in a back pack. I live in upstate NY and my home is actually quite dry. Summer humidity is existent, but not much of an issue here. I shoot mostly in manual mode.

As you and cwgrizz mention about exposure, I did not think to change to a priority mode, I should probably give shutter or aperture priority a try to see the effects. I will try that today.

Can you take a decent picture outdoors in bright light on full Auto? Can you take an indoor picture at short range with flash, again totally on Auto? Post some pictures that you are not happy with. The exif info sometimes come through for us, but in case it does not, include shutter speed, aperture and iso. If the auto shots are good, then the camera and lens are probably fine and we will figure out where things are going wrong. If auto mode doesn't work, then something might be wrong with the hardware.
I'm running out the door, but there are picture posting instructions floating around the forum that will insure the exif data comes through. Tell us all the image specifics just in case.

If you post a picture with EXIF data, I expect to see -3 or more stops of Exposure Compensation set on your camera.

I re-read your second post where you say you are shooting manual. Are you using the exposure meter in the viewfinder? If you are not using the meter, that could be a problem. If you are using the meter, check your exposure compensation like Fred said. In manual, exposure comp won't change settings, but it will affect when the exposure meter tells you that the exposure is correct. Try some full Auto shots like I said above, that will eliminate user error and exposure comp.

I found the image posting info. For whatever reason the forum loses your image's exif data if you don't resize to 1000px on the long side.

Guidelines to adding a photo to your post.

1. Resize photo to 1000px on the long side.
2. Resolution set to 72dpi

These guidelines will be good for viewing on a computer but will not be good for printing. This will help safeguard your copyright.

Capture Date

2013:05:10 12:26:07

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Capture Date

2013:05:10 12:27:06

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2013:05:10 12:28:08

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Hello to all,

I really appreciate the assistance, I got busy with work yesterday and have not been able to check more on my camera. I hope be able to get out today and take some photos with different settings as examples with data that can be analyzed. If I can't today, I will for sure this weekend.

Again, I am grateful for the assistance.

noribda said:

Hello to all,

I really appreciate the assistance, I got busy with work yesterday and have not been able to check more on my camera. I hope be able to get out today and take some photos with different settings as examples with data that can be analyzed. If I can't today, I will for sure this weekend.

Again, I am grateful for the assistance.

Click to expand...

FredKingston said:

If you post a picture with EXIF data, I expect to see -3 or more stops of Exposure Compensation set on your camera.

Click to expand...

As Fred mentioned, be sure to check your exposure compensation. On the top right of the camera is a button labeled +/-. Press it while looking at your display to see if it lists "0.0" If not, then that would need to be set back to zero. If it lists -3.0 or something with a minus in front of it, that would be the problem.

Silly question, but......... since you're shooting in manual, are you using the lowest ISO and a smaller (higher number) apertures? If so, that will force you to use slow shutter speeds.

Do a camera reset to be sure the settings are not the problem. After reset, try it in Green Automatic mode and see what the camera selected to get proper exposure.Does that work or is it still dark.
If it is, I suspect a bent or aperture indexing arm. If you take the lens of you will see a small tab at the rear of the lens that when you push it, the apertur opens and closes, That should be free to move smoothly. In the camera lens mount is a mating metal tab that does not move to the touch but is driven by a motor inside the camera. When metering, the lens is normally wide open but when the shutter is pressed, the calculated desired aperture value drives the little tab in the lens mount of the body to stop down the aperture to the needed size. If that arm inside the camera is bound up or bent, it will not allow the aperture to open fully. That is usually caused by one of the lenses having a bent indexing tab that in turn bends the camera indexing tab.