Julie, I usually use center focus point because that is best for the action shots I do. I do shoot manual when I can, but most of the time it is fast action stuff so I can't. It isn't a huge problem since the shutter priority does yield good photos most of the time and actually I did get some nice bokeh this day on the head closeups, etc (the head shot above here wasn't close up, it is heavily cropped). But I'd sure like to understand this thing!

I shoot a lot of events (both dog and horse) and farm calls now, where I am the "official" photographer (or at least one of them ) so I do sell a lot of photos and I am super picky and only sell the ones that are really good quality. I would rather not do this as it's a lot more fun to shoot creatively and just for myself but I do it to help pay for the gear I got to get better photos to paint from so I can sell paintings to pay for more gear. LOL! So even though I do prefer to meter for the subject, I also do need a good background for selling much of the time. And usually it's not a big problem, but again it's silly I don't understand this one aspect totally of the camera.

Thanks for lightening that image...I do lighten in photoshop but when they are lightened this much because they are so dark to begin with, they look over processed and have a weird color cast to them, which I would neither sell or paint(I have to admit I'm a slave to my photos when painting because I paint so detailed and if there is an amount of noise, etc, I don't bother since I do have hundreds of sharper images to work from, unless it's an exceptional pose or something which of course often does happen! Then I can wing it in a pinch it just makes my job harder). I would not offer this image of the jumping pit bull for sale, (although you did as good a job as possible with it!) it just loses too much I think in the heavy processing it needs.

Yeah Jim it's a mystery all right! I did try every test suggested on the other forums before and the wierd thing is the camera seemed to perform as it should. In real life shots though this happens when using aperture priority. I know it's not a supernatural phenomenon (at least I hope not LOL) it's got to be a setting somewhere or SOMEthing. I just haven't figured it out yet. I even called Canon who stepped me through all the custom functions and still couldn't see the problem. I have just learned to shoot around it and really I think my shots are fine normally it's just there are times it would be nice to have the aperture option for action. Again though even in shutter priority I get nice bokeh on closeups. It's all just very strange. Oh and my exposure compensation is always at +2/3 on the MKII, it has to be or everything is too dark, I've heard several other MKII owners say the same thing. It is right at 0 on my 20D and I get similar exposure from both cameras.

Thanks for the input though both of you, you've got me fired up to figure this out again, I had almost forgotten about it until now.