Exposure compensation
 

Using my Nikon D70 to get shots of birds in my garden,took shutter speed up to1000 at 200iso they were all dark.Tried adjusting the exposure compensation button from -2 to +5 and they still all looked the same. Am I doing something wrong here.

I'm no expert but surely you need to either up the ISO or reduce the shutter speed as it sound like your images are underexposed

Hi goon

Without knowing all of the setting that your using we'll only be guessing at what is going on , it sounds like your either using manual mode or shutter priority and there's just not enough light around to get a decent exposure with the aperture your using . As 2Beers has said you will need to slow your shutter speed down , open up the aperture or increase the ISO to correct the exposure .
Post up your full settings and we may be able to help .

Mark

From my limited experience at shooting birds/planes, I found that either taking a reading from the grass and using manual, or spot metering on the bird. As the majority of the area is bright sky your camera is going to try to achieve a mid tone so will underexpose to do this. If you spot meter then it will take a reading from the subject. If your bird is black or white then you may still need to use exp comp if using tv/av

Unless you are in bright sunshine, 1000th may be too fast. Set your camera on Auto and observe the shutter speed and aperture. See how that compares with what you are setting the camera on. That will give you an idea of where you need to be. Using Auto will get you what you want but it's better to use Aperture priority or Shutter priority, depending on what you want to achieve. They are more creative. Alternatively you could use Program mode in which you set the shutter speed and the camera sets the aperture. Or you set the aperture and the camera sets the speed.

Found a video on youtube which might be helpful..
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpFR_UYhOKY[/url]

So what does the exposure button do

CR3Snapper is about right on this one
if your pointing towards the sky your camera is going to expose for the sky and not the subject you best bet is to take a photo of a tree, grass or anything that is on the ground and look at what the exposure settings are
for instance you take a photo of a tree and the settings say it is 200th of a second at f5.6 at 200iso ( presuming the tree is correctly exposed ) set your camera to manual and dial in the same settings

keep an eye on the light ( point at a tree every now and again to see if the exposure meter is giving correct exposure ) and adjust iso / shutter speed to suite

[QUOTE=goon;85295]So what does the exposure button do[/QUOTE]
The exposure compensation button allows you to overrule the camera automatic settings. Let's say the camera decides on 1/500 sec at f/8, but your picture is a bit dark and you want to lighten it. While holding down the exposure compensation button, turn the command wheel and adjust the exposure by opening up one or two stops. You would now be shooting at 1/500th at f/6.7 or f/5.6. Apparently, you have already tried this but found it was still the same. You even opened up five stops. Something is way off, here. Did you remove the lens cap? :)

Try shooting something else in Auto mode just to make sure there's nothing wrong with the camera. If that works then you need to do a little work on learning exposure. You could also try setting your metering to spot. If you have a bright background and a dark subject, and the camera metering is set on matrix (the whole frame) the camera will expose for the background. If you set the metering on Spot, then it will expose for a very small area (the subject), provided the indicator in your viewfinder shows the subject in the Spot metering area.

There's some really good advice here goon but like I said if you can give us as much information about your set up as possible it will help to narrow down your problem .

Mark