OKay. Sometimes when i take a phot, the lighting seems fine until teh picture is developed, and the photo is dark. I took a photo on 1/60 where the lighting looked fine for my eye, the subject was in the shade. If i lower the shutter speed to say...1/8-1/4, will it capture more light?
Could be that your camera's metering was confused by the sunny background, especially if your subject was in a shade. If you want your subject to be properly metered, you can (1) use spot metering on the face of the subject, (2) allow for some exposure compensation, or (3) use a flash. Just openning the aperature or decreasing the sutter speed would work if you were in manual mode. If not, your camera would just compensate and produce the same result.
What camera are you using? As K_Duffer said, if you adjust shutter speed while your camera is in an auto-exposure mode, it's going to try to compensate to get the same exposure as before. Shutter speeds as slow as 1/8th or 1/4th sec are probably too slow for hand holding if you want sharp, in focus photographs. To increase exposure while in a manual exposure mode you can increase aperture size, slow down the shutter, or increase ISO, or a combination of any of these. Take a look at the sticky post at the top of this forum, and get a basic understanding of how aperture, shutter, and ISO are related to exposure. It's also important to understand how your meter works, and if you have a choice of metering types (matrix, center weighted, averaging, spot, etc...).
