Amateur needing simple advice

[WBL9999]

Good morning, I have a digital rebel EOS and a newbie. I am trying to take photos inside but always have the bright light of the windows dominating my shots and making the subject really dark. Any advice? Thank you. WBL9999

[AlkaPhunk]

You could try to use the flash lightly to enlight your subjects.
And post-treated (software) your pics to gain a lil more light over the darker areas.

[cwphoto]

Reposition subject and/or camera position with respect to the window or exposure compensation also.

[eagle17]

I would say if this is something you plan on doing alot of then yes buy a $140 flash like the sigma ef 500 DG, you can find it at most stores that sell sigma or pretty cheap online at sigma4less.com

it is ok to have strong backlighting as long as you adjust your exposure correctly. set your camera to P mode and while looking through the viewfinder press the av button and move the wheel to the right. you will notice that the little line in the meter will start to move toward the +1. you can use trial and error to see how much "compensation" you will need. it will all depend on how much back light you have.

Also for best results when trying to get object or people that do not fill the whole frame make sure that your metering mode is set to center wieghted. you will find all of this info in the manual that came with the camera, if you do not have the manual you can find it on canons website.

[WBL9999]

That was really helpful and thanks for all the replies. I do have the manual but your reply seemed to make more sense than what I was reading. :)

[eagle17]

glad to help, I would like to stress that adding a decent flash will make a bigger impact as long as you are within 60 feet of your subject. Of course I do recognize that you may not be able to use a flash (for many reasons)

so here is another tip. you can use image processing software like photoshop or elements to pull out the detail from some of your pictures. again you will get a very overexposed image on the lighted background but the object might look better.

good luck and let us know if you have better luck