Fuji XF 100-400mm on X-T1: Photos are dark

[markwelsh]

Hi,

 

I've just bought the Fuji XF 100-400mm lens to go on my Fuji X-T1. Yesterday I tried it out for the first time, and straight away I have a problem, the image that I see in the EVF is great but when I take a photo and view it, the photo is very dark even though I'm shooting in daylight. I have already updated the firmware for the lens and my X-T1 has the latest firmware as well. The exposure dial is set to '0' so it's not that. Has anyone got a suggestion as to what could be causing this? I have the ISO set to 'A', shutter set to 1000. The lens is set to auto aperture, I've also tried manual aperture but got the same result.

 

I'm fairly new to Fuji so it's probably some simple fix that I'm missing.

 

Kind regards

Mark

[Phil]

Have you got the Preview Exposure and White Balance setting on or off? On gives you a "what you see is what you get" image preview as you're looking through the viewfinder, and Off gives you an optimal brightness for viewing, regardless of your exposure settings.

 

Is the picture consistently dark? Try shooting with all manual exposure, then change settings and see if the brightness of the photo changes.

 

My guess is you've got some setting changed in the Image Quality settings. That controls your JPG settings, but even if you're shooting RAW the camera will display a JPG with whatever settings you have it defaulted to. So basically you could have the camera set to burn photos down (-1/3EV, -1EV, etc). That's in one of the first menu pages. If you have that and shoot a JPG, it'll be darker. If you have that and shoot RAW, the RAW file won't be affected, but the JPG displayed on the LCD will look darker.

[darknj]

Where is it dark ? On your computer's screen ? The camera's LCD ?

 

Also, daylight with full bright sun ? Overcast cloud ? Very heavy cloud ? 

 

Don't forget that the XF 100-400 has F4.5 at the widest, that's a rough 2 stops lower than most Fuji lenses and about a stop from most zooms and you lose even more light if you zoom fully to 400 mm.

If you auto ISO is capped at a lower value, like 800, it's quite normal that your picture will be dark if you had the speed set at 1/1000 of a sec.

 

Please give us the details about the picture you took so we can get a better idea of what happened.

[Vidalgo]

Exposure metering mode level on 'average' position can be source of dark pictures, sometimes.

[Jürgen Heger]

I think Vidalgo has a good point. My first pictures with my 100-400 where birds. So mostly I had a lot of bright sky as background which fooled the exposure automatic and I had to use two or three stops positive exposure compensation. The same may be nessecary when doing manual exposure setting but using the meter of the camera.

Of course this was not necessary when the background was darker like the leaves of trees and bushes behind a deer.

 

Edit: Sentence about manual exposure added.

Edited June 29, 2016 by Jürgen Heger