Re: Exposure confusion...

KC wrote:
I have a Canon S3 which does a great job setting exposure (outdoors). So that I could take better pictures of objects, I recently purchased both a light box and a six foot wide white backdrop. I have two 85 watt photo light sources. I tripod mount my camera.

Manual exposure is the way to get studio tripod shots right. Check the histogram and adjust.

What I want to get is a low-noise, adequately exposed image that needs minimal photoshop touch up for improvement.

I am baffled that using the 85 watt lights and backdrop (or lightbox), the Canon S3 underexposes all shots and requires use of additional lighting to get proper exposure. White backgrounds appear gray. If I have the camera bracket exposure, the longer exposure is light enough which shows there is enough light for the camera to get a good shot, but it just isn't calculating things correctly.

Because there are so many settings, I used menu/reset to reset to factory. Set the ISO to AUTO, and took photos in both P and AUTO mode. I still get the same result. Gray whites.

Loading an image into photoshop shows the shutter speed of 1/60 second. F stop of 3.2 (seems high since the camera supports 2.7). I can't tell what ISO the S3 used for the shot.

Since the Canon can adjust aperature, shutter speed and ISO, why would it constanly underexpose these images?
.

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