The exposure is just right.

I was looking at SLR camera reviews at dpreview (an awesome camera review site) and came accross the following post:

"Under-exposure problem was a deal-breaker. Mine was defective - all shots were badly under-exposed in Auto mode and had to be compensated several notches in manual mode. When sent to service, Canon agreed that it was defective and after fixing assured that it had been restored to factory specification. Unfortunately, the default exposure was only marginally better and was still too dark.

Others have commented on under-exposure and the dpreview mentions it as well, but most seem to refer to this as only an inconvenience. Sorry, but it is a deal-breaker for me (and I should think for most people), as it renders Auto/Scene modes completely useless. The camera is marketed as having those modes, so they absolutely should work. The default exposure must be accurate enough so as not to force you into manual mode every single time to compensate.

On forums where many also complained of under-exposure, most pros (not all - some agreed this was a "shame on Canon" situation) seemed quick to tell people either you need more education, SLRs are not point-and-shoots, it is common and expected that D-SLRs will require exposure compensation or shoot RAW and fix it up in post-processing. Hogwash. The pros need to be holding these D-SLR makers to a higher standard. Simply because the digital technology allows for shot review, histogram review, post-processing, etc. doesn't mean we should be required to do those steps for every single shot! Imagine the rolls of film that would be wasted if this was a film SLR where you can't review anything until the film is developed! Even a pro has plenty of cases where there is no time to "set up the shot" and a quick snap in Auto mode is required. And anyone who does not make a living at photography has a ton of shots in that category.

All-in-all this was a $1500+ venture (camera body and 2 IS lenses) that I regretted. I came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth it - the trade-offs of much higher price, much less convenient to lug around and interchange lenses and worse default exposure that always had to be compensated added up to a tool that did not work with me enough and got in my way too much. I went back to a point-and-shoot (Canon PowerShot SX100 IS compact 10x super zoom, $299) and am very satisfied. Considering all you get in that compact of a package at that low of a price point (and the Canon G9 is also there as a great one-more-step-up option), you should really ask yourself if a D-SLR is necessary.

dpreview, in the future if a camera has this poor default exposure, in my opinion it should not be recommended."

After reading this post, I remembered how when I first bought my D400, I thought the exact same thing as the above reviewer. After reading some posts on dpreview regarding the alleged underexposure problem, I nearly went back to the store to return my camera. And then.... while chatting with my office-mate about the problem, I suddenly realized that I was being a huge moron. So, I decided that it was about time to distill some of the knowledge that I had picked up since I first got my camera before I completely forgot what it was like starting out with SLR photography. The following is my response to the above dpreview post:

To all those who think the D400 has an exposure problem read this...

I too thought that my XTi had an exposure problem when I first bought it. I was driving myself nuts adding fill light to every single photo to compensate. After being a long time Canon customer, and owning many Canon point and shoots, I couldn't believe that they could make a camera that could underexpose every single shot. However, I realized that this was my first SLR camera and that probably I was doing something wrong rather than the engineers at Canon.

Then, one fine day, I turned up the brightness on my 24" Dell LCD screen which I usually keep fairly dim for reading text, and tadum... I saw the light. My problem was that my monitor was way too dim. A year and a half later, I am still learning more and more about my camera and taking better and better shots each day.

However, you might ask... how come I never saw this problem when I was taking photos with my point and shoot. Well, the reason is that a point and shoot doesn't have as much dynamic range as the canon SLR. So, when it sees something bright in the image, it just allows it to get blown out to full white, or allows one or more channels to get blown out (which creates a color shift). Because of this, the image overall comes out much brighter. When you take a photo with the XTi, it tries very hard not to blow out any of the highlights, so the image does come out slightly darker than what you expect, but if you just increase the brightness on your monitor, the images will blow your mind, I promise you.

A few more lessons that I've learned along the way:

1. Calibrate your monitor and your printer. This will ensure that your color output is correct. Many monitors are pretty bad out of the box and printers have a hundred different settings to play with. Unfortunately, calibration devices vary in quality, and the software can be hard to use, so ask an experienced photog friend for help.

2. Always shoot in RAW. The reason that the camera tries so hard not to blow out highlights is because these are impossible to recover later on, even if you shot in RAW. But, if you are shooting in RAW, it is fairly easy to brighten a photo after the fact, or change it's white balance. You can do so easily in Digital Photo Professional without loosing any quality. I've been able to take shots of sunsets with the camera pointed at the sun and the foreground nearly completely black in contrast, and then brighten several stops so that the foreground could be seen almost as clearly as during the day because I was shooting in RAW (of course the sun was completely blown out in this case).

3. Never use any program besides Canon's Digital Photo Professional to convert RAW images into jpegs or tiffs. I know it may be tempting to use a program with a nicer interface such as picasa or lightroom to do this, but as of february 2008, they do a horrendous job of converting RAW images from the Canon XTi. The colors come out all wrong (much more yellow and orange), and there are even lines and little squares that appear in some photos. If you don't believe me, you can do the comparison yourself.

4. Try to avoid shooting subjects with bright back-lighting, but if you have to, consider using a fill flash to brighten the subject. If you prefer not to use a flash, you can use exposure compensation, but this might blow out highlights in the background.

This camera is great, and if you are having problems with it, you should first assume that you're doing something wrong and not that the canon engineer messed something up. Once I got these details of using the XTi down, I never even have to worry about getting the correct exposure except in situations where I have back-lit subjects. I do have to tweak white balance once in a while, but I have compared several other Nikon and Canon cameras, and they all seem to have trouble with white balance in tricky lighting situations - another reason to shoot in RAW.

On a side note: I have fairly average sized hands, and I find the camera very comfortable to hold. I think it's also a good size and weight for everyday use. I shoot with a Sigma 18-200 image stabilized lens which takes great pictures and frees me from having to carry multiple lenses. The non-stabilized one is the one I had previously and that one is quite nice as well. When I got the camera, I also looked at the Nikon D40. I thought I might miss the Nikon's 3200 ISO, but with the IS lens, I rarely shoot at 800 ISO, and almost never at 1600, so the lack of 3200 ISO doesn't bother me at all. The only complaint I ever had about this camera is purely cosmetic... that the rubberized grips wear off after heavy use. Besides that, the camera is a gem and a bargain.

This is my first experiment in blogging. Better late than never.