If you’ve ever wanted to know what exposure compensation is you’ve come to the right place. This will be a very basic explanation that will hopefully help you understand what it is, what it does and how you should use it. Before we get started let’s have a cover off the basics
Exposure compensation is when you change the automatic exposure settings your camera is recommending.
Ok, but what does that mean? Let’s start at the beginning. It doesn’t matter what kind of camera you have. If it is a DLSR or mirrorless this is going to work exactly the same.
All cameras have a built-in light meter that the camera uses to get the exposure right. The light meter measures the amount of light being reflected off your subject and it uses this measurement to tell you if it thinks the exposure will be correct or if it will be over-exposed or under-exposed. The way the camera does this is by presenting you with an indicator either in the viewfinder, the back LCD screen or both. This indicator looks something like this.
You will notice that it looks a little like a ruler with a zero in the middle and numbers counting up on either side. You will also notice that there is a little marker under the zero. If you were to take this picture as it looks to the camera right now, it would result in a properly exposed photograph according to the camera. If the camera thought that the picture was going to turn out too dark then that little marker would be somewhere to the left of that zero may be under the one the two the three or even further on. If the camera thought that the image was going to be too bright then the little marker will be somewhere to the right of that zero. Changing either the aperture, shutter speed or ISO he’s going to make that mark and move around. The idea is to change your settings until that marker is under the zero and that is when the camera thinks you have the correct exposure. Now, if this worked every time, I wouldn’t have to write this article. In reality, cameras don’t get these right all the time. In those cases, it is up to you to change the settings so that you get the right exposure. This is referred to as exposure compensation. You are compensating for the error margin in the camera. Now, on I can’t tell you exactly which buttons to push in order to activate your exposure compensation because all cameras are different but it is a basic function that is well documented in most camera user manuals.
One place where cameras seem to struggle is when you’re using your camera at the beach or at the snow. Things such as sand or snow are very reflective and so are very bright. This tends to trick the camera into thinking that the whole scene is very bright and so it deliberately sets the settings to darken the image. In situations like this, it would use exposure compensation to either add brightness or detract brightness from the image automatically. Basically what you’re saying to the camera is… “Whatever you think the right settings are, add one stop” Exposure compensation can also be used for a technique called bracketing which we will get into in another article. So if you’re ever in a situation or your camera just can’t work out the scene and you’re constantly ending up with images that are too dark or too bright, you can use exposure compensation to either add or remove stops of light as you see fit. So now that you know what exposure compensation is I would recommend going out and practise using it. It might feel a little overwhelming and even difficult in some cases but I promise you that the more that you do it, it will just become second nature and soon enough you’ll be doing it without even thinking about it and wondering how you ever did without it. As always if you have any comments or questions regarding anything in this article or any of the other articles please leave me a comment but I will be very happy to respond.