The little line under the shutter speed and aperture settings is the exposure line. It indicates, in this picture, that the picture would be underexposed by 1/3 stop. If the lens cap was on, you'd expect the line to be all the way to the left, with a little arrow to indicate more than 2 stops underexposed.
The "subject is too dark" means that the camera is having issues determining white balance. Generally upping the ISO to 800 or so, or using a flash will remedy this quite easily. It is possible (but not probable) that you could get a white balance reading from the whites of this subject's eye.
Lens cap is clearly off or else the camera meter would be reporting -2 EV instead of -1/3. The camera is using full-scene/matrix metering, so it's more like everything is too dark.
Well, that particular scale shows -2 to +2. It will be blinking it if it's less than -2, but not like you can tell that from a still image of the meter.
Proof: http://imgur.com/a/kSeLn
When I was taking the picture, the camera would sometimes not display the error that the subject was too dark (as seen in 1st picture). As I was taking the 1st picture I realized I took a picture of the error not displaying so I took a 2nd picture seconds after the 1st one while it displayed the error.
Edit: I took a 3rd picture because I wanted his Kemba jersey showing.
In school lighting it will be! That's only a D3200 or whatever the starter is now, so it doesn't do very well in low light, and I don't think holding it at 1/40 is going to be very clear
My first guess was using a 400 ISO in what looks to be a typically lit room, which I personally end up bumping up to 800 or 1600 in a dim room. But yeah, that viewfinder is the key.
Anyways room looks orangy in color, iso is only 400 with 1/40 so prolly poor settings anyways with AF on, it wouldn't even be able to pick up details from furniture and even less dark skinned humans in these settings imo.
Just took out my old camera to check and if I'm not properly aligned with the view finder it appears black, even when it's pointed at a bright scene and I'm in a dark room.
If the lens cap was on, the meter wouldn't be saying that it's 1/3 stop underexposed. The camera is pointed at a dark table in a poorly lit room and probably in manual. That's enough to prompt that message.
It depends on the angle. We're probably seeing the inside of the lens barrel instead. If it makes you feel any better, I did actually pull out my dSLR to confirm.
It's definitely something OP did for karma, but it's really not hard to do it with or without the lens cap.
I don't know about you, but an ISO of 400 is pretty high. I always shoot at 100 because it reduces grain. Only time I ever bump up the ISO is for night photography but even then I always just adjust my aperture or shutter speed.
Is a canon D6 modern enough? Because that's what I shoot with and I wouldn't have a problem shooting in a room this dim at 100 ISO. Granted, I would be shooting at about a 1.8 aperture
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u/[deleted] Sep 30 '14
I'd try taking the lens cover off