Photography Basics

Photography Techniques

Exposure Compensation

Introduction

Whenever you take a picture using an automatic exposure mode the camera will pick an exposure that gives you an image with a normal level of brightness.

Whilst this works for the majority of cases you will often encounter situations where the overall brightness of the scene is not normal.

Examples would include photographing:

A brightly lit beach with white sand
The inside of a dimly lit church
Photographs involving lots of sea

In each of these cases the brightness of the scene is either lighter or darker than you would expect and needs to be compensated for - hence the term 'exposure compensation'.

Example

The following example was taken during the Cowes Week yachting regatta:

The image on the left is the original image without exposure compensation whilst the image on the right shows the correct exposure, with one and a half stops of compensation (extra exposure).

Whilst in this case shooting in a RAW format allowed me to make the compensation after the fact it is always better to expose your photos as best you can in the first place rather than during post processing.

After this shot was taken I noticed the unnatural darkness as I reviewed the shots on camera and added an extra stop of exposure compensation - making subsequent shots the right brightness.

Controlling dynamic range

You can also use exposure compensation to help in situations where you have excessive dynamic range.

Apply negative exposure compensation (less exposure) to help capture the brighter areas of the scene, then apply positive exposure compensation (more exposure) to help capture the darker areas of the scene.