Pictures get darker?

this has to do with some kind of filter that automatically applies to every photo with the intention of "making it look awesomer" --  unfortunately, as you have noticed, it basically just increases the contrast fairly strongly, which indeed trashes some of the high white ranges and low dark ranges.  so when the entire photo is dark, it gets lost into that "darks get darker" abyss.

this is really a cheap attempt at making the photos look better than the camera can actually produce.  i dont think there is a way to disable it.  HOWEVER!!!-- when you load the jpg onto a computer, [at least my macbook pro] it appears to remain in the proper "raw" color palette.