Outdoor photos are too dark have to change them with D-lighting

jennyk

New member
I am new to DSLR and everything is on auto. Outdoor distance photos such as of a building are too dark and I have to change them using d-lighting to make them acceptable and at least as good as my cheap compact.

Can anyone tell me what is going on with this?

Is there a way to have / should I have d-lighting on all the time?

Why did they make the camera so it needed d-lighting to get rid of the darkness?

Thank you
 

Browncoat

Senior Member
Without seeing any photos, my guess is that if D-Lighting is making that much of a difference, you are shooting high contrast images that are metering incorrectly because of the Auto setting. When using Auto mode, you're always going to get the camera's "best guess" when it comes to metering, and that's usually not a good thing for dynamic scenes. Part of the photo is usually going to end up being too dark and others too light.

Most probably do use D-Lighting when shooting outdoors, as it can help balance the extreme contrasts between shadow and highlight areas in a scene. The photos below are taken from Nikon's site. The photo on the left has D-Lighting on, while the one on the right is off:

d-lighting-combo-001.jpg

DSLRs are a whole new ballgame. In time you will learn to create better photographs, but there is a learning curve. More than anything else, I suggest reading your camera's manual. Particularly the chapter(s) on metering modes. Also, check out this guide (and this one) on metering.
 
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