Help with exposure

If you go to home page and enter lazydaisy25 in search box, use drop down tab and select member. Once you get to my page select album K-x photos for examination. I have no idea why the site is saying it's too busy. The link did work...

I get the same message as Anvh

Got there http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/578650887GxBxya

They look quite well expose, maybe slightly too dark but not much.
Remember that the metering is trying to get 14% to 18% grey so this colour link

No idea about the first two (Beachy Head?) but the rest look typical Pentax camera default - underexposed.

The settings for the first two suggest it was a bright day?

Can you remember how the camera was set up? Green mode?

If you use a variety of modes, and are using the settings the camera recommends, then it looks like you will need to boost exposure in-camera. Like others here, my K20D is set to +0.7EV.

The first two shots are odd. The CP could lose you about 1 stop, but the camera should compensate automatically (unless you were shooting in Manual mode?).

I agree with Stefan, the exposure isn't that far out, a small amount of compensation is all thats needed.

The difference between your own prints and a Labs can be down to lots of reasons, even the paper an image is printed on will affect the results.

Well some of those shots are a little dim, but nothing major. If you are unhappy with brightening pictures later, I'd suggest folloing people's advice and edge +EV up a bit, but you may find you start clipping shots - it then depends if you like blown-out skies or not. (which then means you have to start using the flashing highlights function and chimp a lot...)

If you look at the outdoor group shots, some of the skies / jackets are the brightest things in the shot and close to peak white - so the camera has metered from them, its done exactly what it should have done, its not "underexposed" but its exposed to the brightest thing in the scene, which may not be what you wanted...

When brightening them are you adjusting the levels or just the brightness. Maybe they would benefit a bit from some levels adjustment just to lift them a bit.

Is your monitor calibrated?

I've put up a reply twice and it vanishes! Here we go again 3rd time lucky!
Thanks folks for all the advice. Looks like I'll have to up the exposure a tad at least in dull weather or get used to brightening the shots up! I've just been doing the brightness - not played with levels yet - I'll need some time for that. I had a trial of Elements but that's expired before I had a real chance to play. I'm trying Picasa at the moment which at least straightens, crops and brightens! I'll also calibrate my monitors - does anyone have good tips? The last print company I used is sending a calibration chart. Perhaps I'll get reasonable prints then!
For info - the lighthouse pic was taken on Sensitivity priority (goodness knows why...) centre weighted metering, WB Daylight, ISO 200 1/640sec F11