Underexposed

Hi, recently bought a K20D and concerned that most photos look underexposed. Particulalry bad with external flash (sigma 530) - any advice as to what to check?

Hello Julian, welcome to mtb-wales.... oops, sorry, wrong forum, welcome to Pentax user!

Firstly, are you familiar with DSLR's, are you using RAW?

Several people, me included, were quite unimpressed when using RAW for the first time, the pictures look dark and flat and need a lot of work to bring out the best.

Welcome to the forum Julian. Maybe you could post a couple of photos here (not in the gallery), with the EXIF info. I'm sure then that the experts around here will be able to help you out.

on the computer, or on the camera itself?

something which had my Dad and I foxed for a while recently was that we had turned down the screen brightness on the camera for some reason, then forgotten about it. Everything looked underexposed.

I find that my Sigma 530 does underexpose a little, +1 flash compensation seems to be needed.

In general Pentax metering tends to bias towards underexposure to avoid blowing the highlights. You may find you just prefer the results with +0.5 or +1 stop compensation. Personally I let the camera do its thing and pull it up a bit in RAW conversion, but this approach can increase noise.