If there was one aspect of photography that bamboozled me right from the start, and caused so many images to be too dark or too light it was Exposure Compensation (EC). To my untutored mind, it made sense that if an image was dark I should increase EC, and if it was too bright, to send the dial into the negative to make it darker. Now I know a little better, but boy has it taken time!
The image above is on most cameras to indicate the EC function.
The most important lesson was to learn that the camera automatically wants to set every image to 18% grey. So if I point the camera at something that is dark, the camera will automatically try to lighten it. This can mean that a subject that is black will be made lighter by the camera. What if I want it to be black though? Well, that is where EC comes in. I set the EC meter to a negative number to keep it black. For the opposite, say I am photographing snow. The camera will try to make it grey, so the white of the snow will look blue. Therefore I increase the EC setting to a positive number. It seems counterintuitive until this essential lesson is learnt.
Here is a simple guide that helps me work with EC to produce far fewer under or over exposed images.
Firstly, you do not set EC in manual mode. In manual mode the settings you choose for aperture, shutter speed and ISO automatically change the exposure level.
When using EC In aperture mode (AV mode) you are essentially overriding the cameras shutter speed setting. In shutter priority (SV mode) mode, using EC changes the aperture settings set by the camera. You can use the EC dial in the priority modes (Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO), the camera does the rest
So if an image is too dark, increase the EC meter towards 0. If it is too bright, set the EC meter in the opposite direction to the left to get to 0.
We look on the LCD screen or through the view finder for the EC meter as shown above. The numbers on the bottom of the diagram above indicate the EC meter. Generally you want to set the image to 0 for balanced exposure, however many photographer set all their images at – 0.3 to – 0.7, as it is easier to increase the underexposed image in post editing than reduce an over exposed one.
This is EC in a nutshell. A great video explaining EC in an understandable manner is in the Guiding Lights section of this site.
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