Whats wrong with my camera???(pics inside)

[jcarno]

Here are a couple pics I took at work literally seconds apart. As you can see in the one on the left, the sky appears white while the one on the right, the sky is nice and blue. What do I need to adjust to fix this. There are many settings on this cam(HP Photosmart 435) but I don't know exactly what I need to adjust. Any help would be appreciated.

[CrowdAds]

[jcarno]

Here's a couple more with a similar problem.

[Sharkims]

My friend, that works at a camera shop, says it's a white ballance problem.

[opaper]

It looks as though you have "auto bracketing" enabled. Look through your manual and see if that's the case.

[jcarno]

Being an amature I left all the settings on auto. The manual swears that the camera will use the best settings based on the conditions. I guess thats like beleaving the default bios settings are best for your pc. I do not have an "auto bracketing" setting but I have a white balance, iso speed and EV compansation setting. I'll play around with them this weekend. Thanks for your help.

[swannema]

It's an exposure problem.
In the first pic the camera messured more in a darker spot, therefore the over- exposed areas.
As you said you can compensate for it with some manual adjustments or point the camera to a lighter spot and it will look better because the camera will chose a different setting.
Or if you have the oportunity get a polarisation filter for the camera, unfortunately not all cameras have a thread for filters.

I don't think it's a white balance problem because the colors don't look wrong. E.g. if you take a shot with a flash pictures often appear to have a bluish tint to it, that would be a white balance problem. Most cameras don't have a problem with the white balance when you take pictures outside, if you take pictures inside with or without flash an adjustment is often necessary. White is only white when all colors are mixed together correctly, a small shift and the white can have a reddish or bluish tint.

[drpino]

spot metering on?

[Bofinn]

On my camera, you have to hold the button down 1/2 way for a second for the camera to correctly set it's auto focus. Not sure if this sets the exposure as well?

See what your manual says...

[KingTermite]

Could be something like white balance, but if you aren't playing with the settings, then probably not. It's more likely an exposure problem like Swanemma mentioned.

Notice that if you focus (hold button half way down) while lens is pointing at something dark, then it will add a lot of brightness to it (by longer exposure time or higher ISO, or something like that). You may have focused on something before taking the shot and got an overexposed image. Spot meterin could make that happen especially, like dprino said.

[jcarno]

In the white balancing settings I have the following:Auto,Sun,Shade,Tungsten and Flourescent. For these pics I used the "sun" setting as it was a sunny day. Note, that I had the same problem. My next step is to try to use "EV" Compansation.I'm leaning towards lowering the "ev".If this don't work then I move on to "ISO Speed".

[jcarno]

KT, I'm not really sure what you mean bt focussing on something else before snapping the picture. All i'm doing is pointing and clicking.

[sumrtym]

What the hay??? You mean you're snapping one of these pics, then not changing any settings and snapping the second one right after????

I don't understand how the first one can be so off then....

I can tell you it's not ISO speed. I wouldn't mess with that for this problem.

[opaper]

Hi jcarno,
Not knowing your camera, I originally suggested an auto bracketing (exposure) problem. However you say that it doesn’t have that feature. You can reset your camera to factory defaults by taking the batteries out for a minute or so and reinstalling them. I’ll assume they are fully charged. If your camera does the same thing after that, you need to contact a HP representative because it should work on auto with out this result.


Add:Your camera may have a reset button on it, if not try the battery thing.

[opaper]

http://h20179.www2.hp.com/ipgna/call...photosma213534

[zapionics<alt>]

Originally Posted by swannema

It's an exposure problem.
In the first pic the camera messured more in a darker spot, therefore the over- exposed areas....Or if you have the oportunity get a polarisation filter for the camera...

Thats exposure problem all right. The camera has not calculated the exposure (and possibly shutter speed) properly which why the shots are over-exposed. Possibly the camera has not had enough time to do its calculations before the shot is taken or more likely it has compensated too much for the dark areas in the frame.

Digital cameras need to calculate the exposure, focus and white balance prior to actually taking the shot. These calculations are done for each shot and will vary each time depending on the angle, zoom and the light and dark areas in the frame.

One way to control this is to fully frame the subject and then press the shutter button half way down and hold it there.
This signals the camera to do the calculations and then wait. Then you can line up the shot the way you want it and then fully depress the button. The calculations that were made when you had the subject fully framed will not change while the button is held down like that. The resulting shot should give the best exposure for the subject area. (Most digital cameras have this 2 step button feature built in as standard.)

If you suspect that the camera is making too many errors then you could try replacing the batteries with good quality ones first. Weak batteries can cause all types of odd behaviour in digital cameras. If that doesn't work then you may have a faulty camera.