I tend to shoot a lot and not review my photos a lot, but it was recently brought to my attention that my pictures are really dark. I tend to operate in P mode most of the time when I’m doing snapshots and just adjusting EV if I have a particularly bright/dark subject.

However, when shooting in EV +0, my photos are in fact turning out really dark. Even the histogram statistics agree, and I think this behavior has changed over time.

One of the first photos I took with the camera:

Photo I just took:

Histogram:

The on-camera histogram agrees. Everything gets shoved to the left.

Oddly, this doesn’t seem to happen all the time. Seems to mostly show up in low-contrast and indoor photos. It seems the camera would rather shove the histogram to the left rather than center it. Even in manual mode, centering the exposure meter still has the histogram shoved to the left.

Things I’ve tried:

  • Turning off the ND filter. I can confirm ND function works as the ISO shoots up when ND is enabled
  • Updating the firmware. Running the latest version
  • Resetting all camera settings
  • Asking on the Ricoh forums.

Things I haven’t tried:

  • Testing with an 18% grey card (it’s in the mail)

Any idea what could be causing this?