D7500 underexposed pictures on automatic settings (On every possible lens)

LRAT

New member
Hi,

Last year, in June, I upgraded from my D-90 to a D-7500 camera. The reason for the upgrade was that the D-7500 is better in filming, can take time-lapses and is faster. I wanted to stick with the Nikon brand as I already had five lenses, filters, etc.
Since day one I had trouble taking pictures on the Automatic-settings: Every pictures is too dark and under-exposed. Yes, I know, before you shout to me:"You should only take pictures in manual mode!", I want to explain that I'm not a professional photographer. I do a lot of traveling and most of the pictures are taken on the spur of the moment where I don't have time to go through all the settings. Please, accept for what I do. My D-90 performed flawless taking pictures on automatic mode with the same lenses. I also like the idea of having one zoom-lens instead of swapping lenses during inclement weather conditions.

I sent off my camera twice to a Nikon repair center here in Melbourne and twice their response was telling me there's nothing wrong with the camera. The first time I sent the camera was without the lenses. The second time with my lenses. On the second time they told me that the Tamron (18-270 f:3.5-6.3) lens was to blame. I ordered a new lens, a Tamron AF 18-400 F/3.5-6.3 DI II VC HLD with Nikon mount. When the lens arrived I tried it straight away and had... the same result! All pictures are underexposed. My mobile camera (A Samsung S7 Edge) takes better photos than the D-7500 with a new Tamron lens! So, I spent $1,000 just for nothing.

I've got the same problem with my other lenses. These lenses are:
Tamrom 1Di II 8-270mm 1:3.5-6.3 zoom lens
Nikkor AF-S 35mm 1:1.8 G prime lens
Nikkor AF-S 50mm 1:1.8 G prime lens
Sigma 10-20 1:4-5.6 DC HSM wide-angle lens

The camera repair shop said the problem had to do with the lens and the bracketing settings on my camera. I checked the bracketing settings and it's turned to the Off position.

What I want to achieve is: The correct exposure and sharper pictures. I want the photos as JPG's and do plan to do any post editing with software.

Can somebody please tell me what I should check/adjust to be able to take acceptable pictures on the automatic settings?

In two months time I will be going to Scotland and the majority of the pictures will be taken by my D-7500 with the Tamron 18-400 lens on Automatic settings.

I will be forever grateful if somebody can point me in the right direction. Many thanks in advance!

Kind regards,

Luke
Melbourne, Australia
 

Needa

Senior Member
Challenge Team
Welcome! Sorry to hear about your issues. Several possibility come to mind for underexposed photos. I'm sure you probably already checked these, exposure compensation setting, and metering mode. I would probably start with a two button reset to get it back to factory, but you would think it was already done when you sent it in for service.
 

LRAT

New member
Hi Needa,
Yes, the camera has been re-set to factory settings multiple times. According to the Nikon repair there is nothing wrong with the camera. They took about 700 pictures.
The camera has now a picture count of 906 of which I only took 200 myself over the last eight months.
 

Bikerbrent

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

First off, do you still have the D90 and if so, does it still work correctly with all your lenses? Second, why have you waited this long with with problem? Did you buy the camera at a camera store or mail order? If local camera store, take the camera and lenses in and insist they either make it work, exchange the camera, or take it back and give you a refund. If mail order, send them pictures from both cameras and demand they get it fixed or give you a return and refund. Also, if you have a have a local camera store, take a couple of senses with you and see if you can try them on a D7500. If the other camera works, then either your camera is defective or you are doing something wrong. See if they will help you.
 

LRAT

New member
Thanks Bikerbrent,

I gave the D90 to my son and the quality of pictures on the D90 with the same lenses is great.
I purchased the camera at the end of June from an official Nikon camera store in Brisbane, Australia (2,200 km from Melbourne). I was in hospital for three months due to a total knee emplacement (With complications). I then addressed the problem with the Nikon camera store and they referred me to the Nikon service center in Melbourne. This has now been ongoing for two months. I still have to work as well. I spent way too much time chasing this problem and I am at the point of losing my confidence in the Nikon brand. I am at the end of my resources, hence why I signed up to this forum in the hope that somebody can give me some advice about the settings of this camera. The camera is currently at factory settings. There are so many variables and I'm by no means an expert. After spending $3,500 I just want to take acceptable pictures on automatic settings. I watched many YouTube clips but became none the wiser.
Thanks for your reply!
 

wev

Senior Member
Contributor
Trying leaving all as is and take a fixed baseline shot in good light. Increase the Exposure Comp to +1.0. Take a few shots, then move to +2.0 and take a few more. Check the images. If you don't see a pretty big difference in the results, there is something fishy going on. If, on the other hand, they are progressively more overexposed, then it may be a balance between the body and the lens. I shot a 5500 for years with Tamron lens and I had to always shoot at -.3 EC. Like yours, the body was within 'specs', but those can have quite a bit of wiggle.

Post one of each here, just resized, and we'll take a look
 

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
A couple thoughts come to mind. By any chance do you have Auto-ISO turned on? If it's on, and if you reach the upper limit that is set in the camera, the pics can come out under exposed.

And that brings me to my second thought. Doing a factory reset only resets the shooting menu. A Nikon rep told me a factory reset doesn't reset absolutely every change that is made in the settings. Not what you want to hear though.... Keep digging in your menus.
 

TwistedThrottle

Senior Member
Are we talking badly underexposed or just slightly? These lenses you have all have some amount of vignette. Try turning on the vignette control on in the camera menus to see if that helps, the zooms will likely need more help than the primes. It'd be good for you to post a few shots you are concerned about so we can see what you are talking about.
 

LRAT

New member
Hi,

Thank you all very much for your input, suggestions and help.
I have tried to upload a couple of pictures but every time it ends with the message "Upload of file failed"
Any suggestions for uploading the pictures to this website or on the net?
I have tried Flickr as well but it doesn't seem to respond well. When I try to create an album it will process it but the album is never generated.
I am in Australia and the upload speed is miserable. Australia ranks 68th in internet speed just behind Ethiopia.
All my pictures are around 8 MB and I want them to upload in full format so that you can see every detail (Or lack of detail).
I can minimize them but I'm afraid it might not give you enough information.
Cheers,

Luke
 

TwistedThrottle

Senior Member
Hi Luke.
The site has a limit of 2MB. Reduce your shots down to 2MB and you should be good to go. Also, I think you may need to post a few more times before you are allowed to upload pics. Cant remember if its 5 or ten posts before you can upload, something like that. Flickr doesn't play nicely with this site. Best to just upload through the site.
 

LRAT

New member
Thanks TwistedThrottle, I will try again!
During the upload process I was never informed that the upload limit was 2MB.
 

LRAT

New member
2020-01-17 15-00-13 (Minimized).jpg2020-01-17 15-01-04 (Minimized).jpg2020-01-17 15-01-10 (Minimized).jpg2020-01-23 17-11-33 (Minimized).jpg2020-01-23 17-12-12 (Minimized).jpg2020-01-23 17-12-44 (Minimized).jpg

Success! Here are some of the pictures taken with my D7500 with a Tamron 18-400 lens on Automatic settings.
Similar result with Nikkor and Sigma lenses.
 

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
No matter what body I use (DX or FX), if the sky is in the image, I use the +/- button and increase my exposure. Otherwise the pics will be underexposed. Personally I'm not seeing an issue simply because this is what I'd expect for the results. I tend to use +0.7 when I'm doing landscapes. If it's birds against the sky, sometimes I even bump up my exposure even more.

If you are shooting jpeg, you can turn on Active-D Lighting which will lighten your shadows and limit the difference between whites and blacks. Is it possible the feature is turned on in your other Nikon body?
 

Scott Murray

Senior Member
Try taking photos in the early morning (sunrise) or evening (sunset) what I am seeing here is the camera trying to expose for a bright sky and contrasty dark foliage. Do you have a CP filter? Graduated ND filter? These are needed to expose correctly over the entire frame in these circumstances. All images in jpeg are automatically edited, phone cameras edit alot and combine HDR to achieve and even exposure.
Another thing that will affect your lighting is how much of the image you want the camera to expose for this is the metering mode.

https://digital-photography-school.com/cheat-sheet-understand-metering-modes-camera/

I hope this helps you a bit.
 

LRAT

New member
Hark and Scott Murray, thank you both very much for the suggestions.
The Active-D lighting was switched off indeed! I set it on Auto and will take some shots later on.
Scott I will check out the link you sent me.
I'm learning a lot of this and I'm glad to see this forum has some very active and knowledgeable members. Thank you all!
 

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
Sorry you experiencing problems, one consideration is the metering mode plus its possible the D7500 being so much more advanced than the D90 is avoiding blowing the sky out so under exposing the rest of the image.
 

Chris@sabor

Senior Member
All the shots you posted are high dynamic range photos. You can use exposure comp to bring up the shadows but this will blow out the sky or under expose further for a better sky and the shadows will be even darker. Look into bracketing or like most of us, use the "shadow" slider in Lightroom to raise the shadows. You can also lower "highlights" to bring the sky down a bit. Also the graduated filter in lightroom can really help. The problem isn't the camera or lens, it's your understanding of exposure and what a camera can and can't do that needs work. We all went through this...time to crack the books!
 

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
2020-01-23 17-11-33 (Minimized).jpg

Here's your file processed in LR. There's an auto button in LR that uses AI to compare and make adjustments to an Adobe database with one click and it applies the most common adjustments against that database of images. I also raised the shadows a bit as Chris suggested in his post.

You'd have a wider range of adjustments available if the file format were a RAW file instead of a Jpg...
 
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