Turn this setting OFF on your SONY Cameras - Under exposing on Sony cameras 

Great tip... I would have never expected this. We need manufacturers to introduce RAW histograms in their cameras.

You just pinpointed something that has been driving me insane. Thank you.

2 years later and this video just saved me! This setting ruined an early morning portrait session for me, but no more. Thank you!

Without knowing that this was a setting, I had just chalked it up to the terrible screen on my a7iii. This is such a great tip, thank you!

Thank you. I don't need a psychiatrist now.

For YEARS I have wondered why this was happening to me. Thank you 🙏 🙏🙏

Man...for more months than I can even admit, I have been thinking I have no idea what Im doing because this issue has happened nearly EVERY shoot. Im juggling metering modes/zebras/screen brightness, viewfinder brightness - and after this video, I saw that DRO is set to auto. Insane. Thank you for posting this!

Hi Nick, all the Sony cameras I've owned have this option, it's used to extend the camera's Dynamic Range (something we all hope/wish our cameras could do), it helps retain details in the shadows and highlights. As you know the JPG preview is only showing what it looks like with the camera's processing. The RAW file has not had the camera process the image, but it shows what detail you have captured. I find it useful as I know at a glance of the preview if I've captured the detail I want in my final processed image and very rarely have to bracket my shots to get the same result.

Thank you, Nick! You just saved me hours of trying to figure which menu setting was to blame for that. I'm new to the Sony A7R3 and I was wondering why my raw files looked so much darker.

OMG Ive been dealing with issue for months since purchasing my Sony and at times thought about going back to Canon. Thank a million bro!!

OMG Dude! Thank you for saving my life lol, I have tried every possible thing and could not find out why all my raw images did not match what was show on the lcd or histogram. Thank you for making a video about this!!!!

Nice tip! I had mine turned off, I just checked. Other way to get more accurate histogram is to change your Creative style -setting (right below the DRO-setting in the menu) from standard to neutral. The histogram will better represent how the raw files histogram will look. The jpeg preview on the screen of the camera won't look as nice as in standard mode but it has no effect on the raw file.

The exact video I was looking for. Thank you man! This happened to me on my Sony a7iv

I discovered this about 6 months ago myself, it wasn't always but in some situations I'd get grossly underexposed images and thought my light meter or preview in finder had gone wonky. What's frustrating on his camera is whenever I go into video mode there's a bunch of settings I would like setup differently than when taking photos. Also at night be sure to turn your view finder brightness all the way down or you'll come home with very underexposed images, it's deceiving. I tend to use zebras for exposure and go for the highlights but there I found you need to set your zebras to 107+ and also change your picture profile to portrait to see something indicative of what I'd consider proper exposure. Great video and thanks for sharing this bit of information.

While the DRO setting also affects the histogram, turning it off does not make the histogram accurate or meaningful. RAW images are linear and by that nature do look dark, dull and flat. It takes the application of a tone response curve ("gamma") to turn these linear light readings into something resembling the prceptual vision of our eyes. This is what you do among other things in RAW processing and what the camera does in JPEG processing. The camera also applies (in Sony lingo) "Creative Styles" to what becomes the final JPEG image. The JPEG image also is a lot more limited in its dynamic range than the RAW. Unfortunately, with all mainstream camera manufacturers, the histogram as well as both the live view and the review of the taken image are based of the JPEG image (and so are the embedded JPEG preview images in the RAW image). Often RAW processing software does not default to show you the RAW image without further processing other than the demosaicing, but also applies some default tone response curve (that you can still alter all the way you want by changing the settings of whichever procssing module does it). Typically these defaults are setup as to match/mimic the JPEG processing of the camera. So users may not get to see the actual linear RAW image. In case of the Adobe products, they reportedly seem to actually apply different tone response curves depending on what Creative Style selection has been encoded in the EXIF data, that mimic these styles. And they seem to put some effort into matching the look of the camera JPEGs quite closely. This probably misleads into thinking the exposure of the JPEG was anywhere near accurate to that of the RAW if only DRO was turned off. Turning off DRO is just one step to get all of these closer to the actual RAW image. Using Neutral or even a custom Creative Style with tweaked down contrast and other settings are others to try and achieve this. Ultimately, when going for UniWB to get a histogram that is as good as it gets for the purpose of ETTR, you may well end up with unusable, awful looking JPEG/live view. In case of the Sony A7 models, there luckily are the zebra settings as an alternative. Custom zebra settings can be configured to values beyond 100% and on my A7R IV I have it set to 107+ which makes the appearance of zebra patterns in the camera match those of the RAW over exposure warning patterns in my RAW processor. This allows both doing ETTR purely based on the zebra pattern and also just "normal" exposure for the midtones with the safeguard of being alerted about clipped highlights by the zebras showing up, ignoring the histogram (in fact having disabled the EVF and monitor views that show the histogram) while kepping the Creative Style at the default of Standard to have colors and overall preview image more pleasing (and closer to whatever the final RAW processed result will be). And as such, I do have DRO turned on intentionally. I do want to make use of the full dynamic range of the camera (which still is lower than the one the human eye can perceive) and by the means of my RAW workflow compress more of it into the final image (e.g. by brightening shadows), thus the final result is often closer to the camera JPEG with DRO than to the camera JPEG without DRO and therefore having DRO enabled gives me the better embedded preview image that I get to see in the camera and when culling before having touched the image in the RAW processor. The shadows need to be kept an eye on here, yes. But one could either configure a second custom zebra that is activated temporarily while holding a custom button or you just go by experience (of how bad a backlit situation you are still happy enough with resulting shadow noise to not bother setting up the tripod for a bracketed shot, or not) and the situation. And that is no difference to working with the histogram whether at default settings or a UniWB setup, you always have to know from experience how much more you can/are willing to pull out of he shadows than the (no matter what) lower dynamic range than the RAW image histogram could show.

PERFECT timing!! That’s exactly what I’ve been going through and thought what is wrong with my camera! Thank you!!!

Great tip and appreciate you taking the time to tell everyone. Thank you! Saw you on Gavin's videos, have been watching and learning your videos, definitely helpful to me and again, appreciate you doing them for us common folks! :)

Wow. You just solved a mystery that has baffled me for months. Thank u

Thanks, Nick. I just got out of bed and turned DRO off.

Man this is so f’d up. I traded my a9 for an a7riii a few weeks ago and when I did a studio shoot this past Sunday and got them into Lightroom they were all 1 1/2 stops underexposed. WTF I thought because I knew I was exposing correctly. I thought I was going mad. This is not cool at all. Glad I finally found the answer. 🙏

Cannot believe I caught this video!!! Just got a new A7R4, and couldn’t understand why all my still photos of people’s faces were so dark, even though I was shooting with a window behind them, they were like silhouetted.I think this may be it. Thank you so very much. Love your videos.

Not that I use Sony gear, but this is an excellent reminder for shooters of any equipment to know what all those settings on their cameras and lenses mean. And to then set those parameters to whatever suits their needs best. All the latest gear sure is capable, but you can really only take advantage of such capability if you know what it is and how to use it.

This problem has been driving me crazy for a while now Nick. You have just solved it for me! Thank you!

Nice tip... would be helpful for some of your audience, if you could make a video of how your camera is setup in the menu and why you chose to set it up in that manner. Thanks.

Useful. Mine was already turned off, but still good to know.

stumbled onto this and OMG... this is what's been happening for months. unexplainable until now, many many thanks!

Nick, do you recommend turning this off if we are shooting JPEG, or just when working with RAW? I watch my histogram, but still consistently underexpose my images when shooting JPEG.

Great tip! I’ve had my camera for almost a year now, and had no idea this is what was causing my photos to look underexposed. Thank you!

This fixed it! The issue was driving me batty. Thanks for the detailed explanation

I have figured it out since my first alpha, even portrait shooter like Manny Ortiz don't know this I assume lol, I noticed that he has it on every time when he shares his screen, I hope he will thank you for this like the way he figured later on that the bokeh is more creamy when you deactivate the e-curtain mode while shooting with high SS on Sony alpha cameras. Thanks for helping peoples out there 👏

Like most of you, I shoot in RAW. I always wondered why my images imported into Lightroom with a far different histogram than I had set my exposure levels to. You just earned another subscriber! Thank you!!

SONY SMH! Took me a few years to figure this out. Better late than never. Thanks man!

I think this is just what i was looking for. I just turned it off and i will check how things go next time i take photos. Thanks Nick.

I have been scratching my head the past couple of weeks over this exact issue, THANK YOU.

I've been trying to figure out what was causing it. So glad you posted this. Thank you.

I thini its good to know and unserstand that option. Still I prefere to have it on (Auto) because then you also immediately see it in the way it looks after some basic adjsutments im LR or Capture One. I shoot JPG and RAW btw so I already have a optimized JPG which is rather good already.

omg found this by chance thank you so much was wondering whats going on. Also you dont gain anything from leaving it on when shooting raw you can make all the adjustments the camera or dro does manually ?

Guys, wait a second! Most people who are finding this video are looking for a solution to the following problem. They shot pictures, and those same pictures appear to be just fine inside their cameras, but the second the RAW files are ran through Adobe Bridge / Lightroom, they become super dark. Out of nowhere! Obviously you explained everything in the video, and how to prevent that from happening in the future. That’s cool, but many of us are confused AF because I’m not just gonna call my clients and ask them to run it back because I had a DR issue. In other words, what should I do with these files now? There’s a way to make the software interpret the RAW images in “default,” and that will even out the exposure just the way it was when you took the photos. I don’t know much about this, and I can’t find it in Adobe Bridge, but I need to fix the photos that I already have.

Why is no one talking about this?? You saved me man, this was driving me crazy.

I'd seen a setup guide that recommended turning this on so you can take advantage of the full dynamic range (so you know how much you can push/pull it in post). Not a good idea, especially for evening/night photography. It will lift your shadows and make it look like you have a good exposure, when you look at the RAW it's 5 stops under exposed.

This was extremely helpful! I just had a shoot which I thought was turning out awesome in-camera and now that I've imported into Lightroom, everything is underexposed. I'm convinced this should help.

Great stuff Nick! I've been searching for a way to change the JPEG camera preview but didn't find anyone offering the advice. It also affects the blinkies - indicating you are overexposed when in fact you're not. Nightmare for portrait photography, as well as landscape

I was just having this issue two days ago and had no idea what was going on. Thank you for making this!

Besides this, I saw there is a trend towards underexposure in photos. I can't recall the magazine that posted this frequently, but I really liked it. If it doesn't look like a mistake, like in your example, it can be a great option to give images a very special appearance. I once used to do that with my Canon, Lights down, Color down, Contrast down but with great sharpness and clarity in details.

Thanks! I never understood why I was the only student that couldn't expose correctly hahaha. Then I kind of learnt how to trick the camera over exposing and editing shadows and vignettes. Three years later I'm getting it. Loved your video!

Thanks Nick! I have been struggling with this for ages and now images come out how they look on camera. Cheers

Brilliant, been having the same issue for ages and had been scratching my head as to what was going on. Thanks for sharing!

2:23 it's good to hear that an educator makes such mistakes too. i recently shot my first wedding having this setting enabled and i was very much shocked once i saw the raw files in lr

I was a canon shooter just moved to sony and i was having horrible noise in my jpeg landscape pics due to DRO set at +4 and it was automatically lifting the shadows too much to balance the photos and i was seeing noise in green foliage even at 400 iso.. after turning it off i am much relieved now..thanks for highlighting the issue👍

Thanks for posting this. I never use DRO, but found your video because I wondered if it might be useful. Some thoughts… From Sony: “The DRO function analyzes the contrast and produces an image with optimal brightness and recovered shadow detail. You can use this function while the subject is moving or during continuous shooting. The image may appear noisy because the image is corrected with image processing.” Note the last two words. It’s good to remember that any function of the camera that involves image processing will only effect the jpeg not the RAW, since by definition RAW is unprocessed. Sony disables some image processing functions when the camera is set to RAW, but apparently does not disable DRO. Which functions are disabled may vary with camera model. For my casual photography I usually shoot jpeg, but I leave DRO off because I don’t care for the noise it usually adds to shadows. If I need to expand dynamic range in jpeg mode I’ll go straight to HDR, but that’s only good for a still scene. I guess DRO could be useful if I want to shoot jpeg in a high dynamic range environment with motion (e.g., birds), but shooting RAW with DRO off and processing off-camera is more likely to produce acceptable images. I like your suggestion of turning DRO on for video. I’ll try it.

I’m am so thankful for you posting this but also so damn pissed that’s it taken over a year for me to figure out wtf was going on. I was about to give up on Sony. Damn you Sony!!

This explains why I was continuous underexposing mine.. for years!!! Thank you!!

OMG best tip ever. Explains why my shots were always dark. Thank you!

This is absolutely great tip!! Wondering how would this apply to videos? I have the exact same problem when shooting videos. They look fine on the camera given the picture profile I configured but when uploading to any streaming platform it becomes darker.

Oh... my... god... I have been using the histogram exclusively for the last two months, and all my photo's in lightroom have been super dark and I had to crank up the shadows and darks to maximum all the time. I figured I was just useless at following the histogram and needed to keep practicing OR that was "just the way it was". After watching this, I see that DXO is set to auto. I've just disabled it after watching this and I'm hoping the world makes way more sense when I get to go out and take more photos this week! If this does indeed change, you are a superstar!

I thought I was a sucky photographer...because EVERY image was too dark in Lightroom. well maybe I still am, but now I’ll have a fighting chance. You earned another subscriber for this tip! Thank you!!

Man great tip! This whole time I've been frustrated thinking it was Lightroom.

I had the exact same issue, and by chance turned it off and OMG so much better. Love your channel sir!!

Fortunately the a7r3 can pull a lot of detail out of shadows but, yeah.....this video just saved me a ton of grief. I was on the verge of switching to Canon.

So it’s okay to use if you are shooting jpegs?

OMG Thank You! I was losing my mind trying to figure out what was going on in Lightroom with this. Great tip!

One of the most important adjustments on a Sony camera basically to be highlighted‼️👍👍👍

Thank you so much for this video!! As a Sony user for the last few years, I thought I had my settings all adjusted in my A7riii but I just had a fairly critical photo shoot and the photos looked stunning on the back of the camera, but, as you said, they were very dark when they were imported into Lightroom. Dark exposure is not good when you are photographing skin.... Thought it might be my camera... Thank you again!

Thank you! I've had exactly this issue especially shooting in dark situations like early blue hour. So glad you posted this.

Thanks for explaining DRO and when one may or may not want to use it. I had exactly the problem as you described.

Thanx Nick. I have never used this function although testing it proves you right. You must be enjoying your Sony. We changed from Canon and to A7R3 with Sony G Master and Tamron (17-28 & 28-75) lenses and its awesome. Would be great to see some of your "big wave" shots again using the Sony.

I usually leave that setting at level 1. Because when I shoot raw 99% of time I need boost shadow anyway. So I want to have a good preview in camera. So I find turn the setting at 1 level is pretty good for visualize the final result. But level 3 and 4 is too strong for my taste.

For the last 2 years!! Thank you so very much!

So this is why I always felt like one stop of compensation was the only way to get decent looking images in camera. Thanks a lot!

Never too late for a refresher course on my Sony Rx!0II. Definitely helpful. Thanks posting...

Thank you Nick! As per the comments below this has had me so frustrated since changing over from Canon to Sony.

the best explanation of this feature i've seen (which is not straightforward). thank you.

Thank you Nick, I was very concerned about this, given the difference in the in-camera histogram & the Lightroom histogram. In some instances it can lead to unnecessary noise when processing the underexposed raw file. Tried to get an answer from Sony and Adobe bout this, but could find nothing. A lot of A7R3 owners will be very happy to hear about this setting.

I'm a Nikon shutter and I been having this problem. Although it may be different for Nikon, you point me to the right direction. I though that it was something to do with lightroom. Thanks you so much!!

Thank you for this tip. It has been driving me nuts trying to figure out why my nighttime images were so underexposed. At last a solution that makes sense. Many Thanks

Thank you! I have been searching for years as to the purpose of this feature. I have now turned it off since I only shoot in RAW.

you just fixed my issue i had for years... the auto preview would be dark, the galery pics would be brigther but when i imported them, they would be dark again...

I had this same issue with my a6400. Now that I bought my a7iii I have finally figured this out and turned it off. Thanks for the video!

I have had the same problem for so long! Thank you for letting us know! It was embarrassing when I'd shoot with friends and my images were all underexposed

Thanks Nick, i had the same problem and i didn't have a clue what was causing it, keep up the good work.

Thank you so much, it was actually very helpful!!!! I have one question if you don't mind about something else you said on the vídeo... You said that you tell your students to use the histogram and my question is - If you have the Zebra On, can't you ignore the histogram because the Zebra will tell you if you are overexposing?? TY

I got caught by this shooting the Milky Way earlier this summer. In the field everyone was blown away by the dynamic range and shadow detail of the Sony. The histogram validated the exposure. Then Lightroom ruined the photos once I loaded them. Oh and then I found the DR setting 🤪 The backup jpg on the second card look great though. Actually it took a fair amount of digging around to find this setting and figure out what was really going on. Thank you for sharing this

Thanks that was right on. Q: is a 28-75mm 2.8 zoom good for landscape photography ?

I have done 1000 tests, and I can assure without any doubt that the adjustments you make in JPG affect the RAW file, you can do the test yourself, shoot in JPG + RAW in CINE 4 profile for example, expose a scene by eye , for example ISO 800 shutter 1/1000 f5.6, now change the profile to Slog2, as it is a log profile to gain dynamic range it will be darker, re-expose the scene by eye, let's say that you only change the speed of 1/1000 to 1/500 to make it look brighter, now comes the surprise, take the 2 RAW files to lightroom, apply exactly the same exposure correction to both files, such as the file with a 1/500 exposure is darker than 1/1000 ?? obviously the DRO is disabled in both since it is not compatible with those shooting modes

Man thank you. This was driving me nuts and slowing down my workflow for my professional work. Thanks!

Thanks for this video, I was trying to figure it out after years what the heck is goin' on here and eventually, you confirm my assumption about this setting. Great video. Thanks

Wow Ive needed this for a year now!!

Thank you. I was experiencing the same thing. Would you change the monitor brightness as well?

Thank you so much for this! I it was the display brightness on my A6300 or something because it always looked so lighter in the shadows on the camera until I put the RAWs into Lightroom.

Hey I just fell onto this video and I've been absolutely having this issue. Thank you so much. Why do you prefer it on for video?

One thing worth mentioning is that Adobe defaults to “Adobe Color”when we bring photos up in Lightroom or Camera Raw. It does not default to the picture style that we have chosen in our camera. We have to choose that. Second thing is that all of the profiles (that Adobe gives us in Lightroom or Camera Raw) including the Adobe made Sony (or any camera) “picture profiles” push contrast by at least 2 to 3+ stops brighter than we can actually shoot! If we decide to make and choose to use a linear profile in Lightroom/Camera Raw (which is so easy) it UNDOES all of the huge laundry list of often quite damaging adjustments that Adobe BAKES INTO our raw files before they even come up in Lightroom/Camera Raw, that we can’t undo otherwise!!! This is not just about getting more dynamic range (as many think about it) but this is about phenomenally higher quality photos, before making a single adjustment! Adobe can chop off one, two, three and even more stops of light before it even arrives in Lightroom! And because HALF OF ALL THE DATA that is in our photo file is in the brightest 1 single stop of light at linear capture, this is sometimes (often) horrendous. A really smart camera, would also give us the option of seeing the histogram as linear while we were capturing it. Often we can shoot 2, ,3, 4, 5, and even 6 stops brighter than our camera is telling us!!! And that doubles, triples, quadruples, quintuples (5x) sextuplets (6x) septuplets (7x) and even more the quality of our overall photo file! I’m very glad you’re teaching on this because this is something that so many people are confused about! Keep up the great work. And hopefully you’ll return my emails someday. 😁 I would LOVE to do a podcast with you about this.

lol I was feeling frustrated why it seem right but after transferring to my laptop I feel like everything was messed up, now it explains everything thanks!

:O !!!!! I've been dealing with this FOREVER, I can't even imagine how many tons of hours I've lost editing in Lightroom fixing countless images! Thanks for the head's up!

That option is a disaster if you shoot still. It happened to me when we’re on vacation 3 weeks in Europe. I couldn’t figure out why the pictures looked different on my monitor at home. Finally found out about it, turned it off ever since. Sony needs to work on this, it shouldn’t affect the jpeg previews when we shoot RAW.

Thanks for that Nick. Had noticed this when doing brackets....my first bracket would often be black!

Thanks!!! Just got back from Kauai and imported all pics and tons of them had this issue. Now have it switched!

Thanks Nick, Also useful for other brands. Of course with other names and menu. btw, I made the settings of the Standard preview with less contrast and saturation. I try to imitate a raw preview.

I've had this problem for a long time too. Many thanks. Really helpful.

THANK YUO THIS HAS BEEN DRIVING ME CRAZY ESPECIALLY AS A NEW PHOTOGRAPHER

thanks for the info! any advice for jpeg shooters on how useful this feature may be?