Terribly washed out shots on Manual mode -- please advise

[fmw]

Meters are designed to average out the subject to 18% gray. It will overexpose black and underexpose white to get them to medium gray. That is what the meter did in your manual shot. It took an evening shot and turned it into a daylight shot by overexposing. It is important to understand what your meter does. Manual exposure requires the photographer to out-think the metering system. Those of us who learned phoography before the era of auto exposure would know to underexpose the shot based on the reflected meter reading. I recommend going to the library and checking out an old book on photographic exposures.

 

[unpopular]

More precisely, meters are calibrated to an arbitrary middle grey, traditionally 18% reflectance. What this means is that when your light meter reads "0" that means the sensor/film is receiving the same amount of exposure as was present when the meter was calibrated.

This is an important point, because it means that "0" does not mean "proper", only that it matches a reference condition.

 

[jessicagreen765]

Try to use photoshop and turn does photos into one photo by creating an HDR image.

 

[unpopular]

^^ +1. Don't bother leaning how to use your camera.