Exposure compensation

In some situations, you might find that the picture comes out is either underexposed or overexposed. There is a feature in your camera setting that allows to compensate the amount of exposure. This feature known as exposure compensation which look like this [+/-] or this in the camera. You can use exposure compensation in manual mode in point and shoot camera or aperture priority, shutter priority and program mode in DSLR.

Exposure compensation in point and shoot camera have a range of +/- 2 f-stops. For advanced camera such as DSLR, it may have more than +/- 2 f-stops (in the case of Nikon D3, +/- 5 stops). It comes in handy in few ways:

1. Changing the setting - You don't have the time to adjust your shutter speed and aperture to properly expose the picture or some entry level cameras (referring to point and shoot cameras) do not have the capability to allow user to set their shutter speed and aperture but have exposure compensation to allow users to adjust setting. Don't get confused with changing shutter speed or aperture to expose a picture as you need to set both of them to get a properly exposed picture which is time consuming. Changing either the shutter speed or aperture will give you a properly exposed picture as the camera will select the best setting which it thinks will expose the picture well. Alternatively you can change the ISO setting but the result will be grainy picture if you set ISO value too high.

2. To overcome camera's intelligence - Camera depends on the type of metering used (which will be explained in this website) sometimes may not give you an accurate reading. In fact, when you half pressed the shutter button, the camera is telling you it is shooting at this setting to get a properly exposed picture which may not be true for certain lighting conditions. This will result in over or under exposed pictures. As such exposure compensation provides a way to allow users to manually adjust setting.

It is important to know what sort of lighting condition to deal with and here are some few examples of how exposure compensation is to be used:

1. Sometimes when you take a subject with a bright background, the subject will be underexposed. As such to light up the subject, increase exposure compensation will be able to brighten the subject.
2. Any white object or background such as snow will underexpose picture. Increase the exposure compensation will help to get a properly exposed picture.
3. Exposure compensation is also useful for those people that photograph objects in a light tent. A light tent is a square box that has numerous colored backgrounds so photographers can capture products and objects with one background color. For example, if a white background is used and you don't change the exposure compensation, the background may appear off white.

In short, exposure compensation provides user another way to get a good picture. It saves you the trouble from setting both shutter speed and aperture which is not feasible as every moment is precious. You need to be quick to capture the picture if not you will miss it.

<< Return to Glossary