Re: Dark pictures

Sammy:
Part of the problem lies in the camera itself. Digital cameras produced images two ways:
(1) if you are shooting JPEG or TIF, the cameara does all of the processing of the image (exposure, contrast, saturation, etc.).
(2) Better digital cameras (including all the pro models) offer the option of shooting raw images. Raw images are like negatives. The cameara doesn't do any internal processing of the image. You have to do that yourself in PhotoShop.
Those who so sarcastically slammed PhotoShop forget that PhotoShop is an electronic darkroom. All of the photos made over the years by folks like Perry, Kindig, Richardson, etc. were processed by someone in a darkoom. I personally have printed many of Kindig and Richardson's negs and I can tell you that some of them required a lot of work to get a good print. I had to choose what cropping to use, how dark or how light to make the print, what contrast paper to use, how much dodging and burning to use. Bob Richardson had many of his photos printed orginally be something like Walgreens as he had no persoanl darkroom at first. When I gave him prints that I had made, his comment often would be: "That sure looks better than any print I have had before."
You cannot expect great images all the time from these auto exposure, auto focus, auto everything digital cameras. Someone has to take the raw data (the negative) and do what photographers have been doing since the 1850s.