you need to increase the tolerance factor. if the gradient is really bright DBE thinks that the sample is placed on the foreground and so it rejects the sample.
you can also mess with the shadows relaxation value, but you should be able to get it with just the tolerance value.
finally, sometimes DBE can get confused if the image has some kind of a border with not-quite-black values. this is a common occurence after integrating several registered images. in this case you should crop the image first before applying DBE.
rob