Help Camera pics are washed out

[SoleilBrillant]

Hi all,

The photos I've taken have always been washed out. The only relevant camera settings I can change seem to be the exposure value and the shot mode, both of which I've played around with to little success. Any ideas? Does anyone have similar issues with their camera?

The online reviews I've found while Googling seem to be fond of the camera. I wonder if my phone has a software defect or if the hardware itself is kooky. I wonder what else it could be. Thoughts?

thanks,
Jenny

 

[Rukbat]

Try installing Camera FV-5 and use spot metering. Then you can expose for the part of the frame you want. There are after capture apps that you can use to spot or burn small portions of the picture that don't expose right when the main point of interest does.

It's no different than a film camera - if the brightness ratio (contrast) of the scene is high (some VERY lighted areas and some VERY dark areas), there's no film (or sensor) with the dynamic range to capture all of it - you have to manipulate the picture after you take it to reduce the contrast. Spot metering helps - you can get good details in something that's VERY brightly back-lit, by metering the object you want, and ignoring the backlighting - but some scenes just have too great a dynamic range for anything to capture. Even our eyes have a limited dynamic range, which you'd see if you're on a desert at noon, where there are large rocks causing deep shadows. (The effect must have been almost surrealistic for those astronauts who were on the moon, looking at a plain almost too bright to look at, with shadows so dark that there was no detail visible.)