1ev (ish) under exposed every time

[maninsuitcase]

Since swapping to RAW I am finding that 90+% of my photos are coming out under exposed. What looks okay on the screen and on the preview jpeg looks about right. But as soon as lightroom gets to it and redoes the preview the image drops a noticable amount of brightness and colour goes duller. This is for stuff taken using A, S or P. Manual I don't really know as I try to compensate so they are all over the place exposure wise.

Is this due to LR having to guess the settings or is the camera getting the metering wrong?

Can I do anything other than use colour corrections (I am using these atm) and adding 1ev. I have setup 3 presets which do this and these get me pretty much back to the preview jpeg, which is usually enough, anything special gets further treatment. While this works for the most part, it seems the wrong way to go about things as I would rather get it right in the 1st place.

 

[loplyg]

Now that you're shooting RAW the software you process it in has a huge impact on things like this.

It's just a PP issue.

Depending on what you're using you can doubltess configure the software to use certain defaults.

Certainly in Adobe Camera RAW you just set the exposure/saturation/etc/etc as you want then go into Presets and save as default...

Each bit of software has it's own tendencies and they vary per-camera, so I guess whatever your using has a slightly dark interpretation of the D50 RAW files.

 

[maninsuitcase]

Sorry though I had said I was using Lightroom.

If it's purely the PP then it's not a big deal, I just wanted to check it wasn't the camera metering it wrong. I will stick with my presets which add 1ev by default as well as tweaking the colour.

 

[Tracer]

I think this is normal, or at least common, if you don't use the camera manufacturer's own software which will apply the camera's inbuilt curve. If you try Nikon's free (though clunky) ViewNX you should see the same result as the preview jpg. What you think is underexposure in the RAW file is actually protecting the highlights.

I had a D70s and noticed the same thing. I liked ToneUp as a converter - it is only about £15, uses Nikon's own algorithms, and you can either make your own curve or download any number of different ones to try. It is very interesting seeing the different results - I often used the D50 one!

ToneUp hasn't been updated for a year and doesn't work so well with my D300, so I have moved on to RawTherapee which I find excellent. It is also free.

HTH