What Is Exposure Compensation and How Does It Work?
Cameras do a pretty good job of determining a proper exposure for the scene you are about to shoot. But they don’t always get it right. Sometimes the image is overexposed and other times it is underexposed.
When this happens, you need to override the exposure determined by the camera. If you are shooting in aperture priority or shutter priority mode, you can’t do this by adjusting the aperture or shutter speed because the camera will compensate for the change by adjusting the other setting and you get the same exposure.
For example, if you are shooting aperture priority and the aperture is set to f/5.6 (with ISO 100), the camera may set the shutter speed at 1/125 of a second. If you need to darken the image by one stop and change the aperture to f/8, the camera will compensate for the reduced brightness by changing the shutter speed to 1/60 of a second. You get the same exposure.
But you can override the camera’s exposure settings by using Exposure Compensation. You can either increase or decrease the exposure and the camera will then alter its settings to either over or underexpose the image by the amount you specified.
To use the same example as above, to darken the image by one stop you would set the Exposure Compensation to -1.0. You are shooting in aperture priority mode so the camera will adjust the shutter speed. Instead of the original shutter speed of 1/125 of a second it will reduce the shutter speed by one stop to 1/250 of a second, causing the exposure to be reduced by one stop.
Exposure compensation works well when shooting in aperture or shutter priority. When shooting in manual mode you are responsible for over or underexposing the image as needed.
Exposure compensation does not work in Auto mode.
Finding the Control
Different camera manufactures have their own ways of applying exposure compensation. This may even change from of the manufacturer’s model to another.
Consult your camera’s manual to learn how to use it.
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Read more:
Tell Me More About Exposure
Tell Me More About ISO
Tell Me More About Aperture
Tell Me More About Shutter Speed
Tell Me More About the Exposure Triangle
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