M darker than A or S?

[NateNLogansDad]

Well, I have 2 days left till we are on our way to the world and I have REALLY been trying to learn my camera and practicing with the night shots. Like I've said 100 times already, I am NO WHERE NEAR the level most of you guys are on, so please be gentle

Here's the scenario. I have the Nikon Coolpix P80 P&S bridge camera. Tonight after work (midnight) I was taking pictures of our parking lot and I'm very impressed by how nice and bright they came out. I switched back and forth from A and S priority with the same settings and the picture came out exactly the same. When I switched to Manual and used the same settings, the pictures come out significantly darker. Is there a reason for this? I triple checked all of the settings and everything is exact. Is it possible a sensor may have a problem or is this common? I can post pics with the info from each file in the morning but wanted to throw it out there. Thanks guys!

 

[Code]

I doubt there is anything wrong with your camera.

Exposure is affected by three variables... aperture, shutter speed, and ISO sensitivity. If the aperture and shutter speed truly were exactly the same between shots, then the ISO was different. Did you have ISO on auto when in A & S priorities?

 

[NateNLogansDad]

Just checked, ISO and White Balance are both set to auto for all 3 settings.

 

[Code]

I downloaded the P80 manual to look at what it had to say about Manual mode, and found this:

 

[Chikabowa]

That was your problem - when you switched over to manual, the auto adjust ISO turned off. So instead of it being HIGH sensitivity while in the semi-automatic modes, it automatically defaulted to ISO 64.

 

[NateNLogansDad]

If you could hear me through the typing I'd be yelling YOU ARE THE FRIGGEN MAN! I have a small laptop that I've been looking at the manual with and didn't see that when I was scrolling down (I don't see the WHOLE page at once.) I just went and looked for that image and now I feel like an idiot for not seeing it. THANK YOU SO MUCH! YOU ARE THE FRIGGEN MAN!