 Ben F |
Exposure Compensation First off id like to say sorry for all the questions asked, however id also like to say thanks to everyone for their responses because I am learning soooooo much!!!!! In particular thanks to Kerry and Doug. Now, onto my question, re: exposure compensation. Im having a little trouble understanding it. Im not sure how this works, but I guess it could be that when you add exposure, say +1 to a bride in white dress, your telling the camera that it is actually brighter than what it, therefore the +. Can someone please explain??? THanks
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
white would make the camera think the scene is brighter than it actually is, which would result in under exposure. So expo compensate on the + side, increase exposure, to correct it.
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Bob Cammarata |
Plus makes the scene brighter, minus makes it darker. In the case of metering the white dress (or white snow), your in-camera meter wants to turn the dress to neutral gray. You would set your compensation dial to +1 if it's cloudy or if your subject is in shade...and +2 for bright sun. This will over-expose the dress enough to make it come out white. When done correctly, everything else in the scene will look normal. This same process can be achieved with the aperture and/or shutter speed controls but the compensation method is preferred if you don't want to change your depth of field or worry about not being able to freeze the action.
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Irene Troy |
Okay Ben, I was hoping that someone like Jon Close would respond to your question. Jon is one of the most knowledgeable and helpful people here and his answers are almost always very detailed and correct. However, let me try to explain exposure compensation as I understand it and then someone else can correct me if I am wrong. I use EC when I want to ensure that my exposure is right on the money and when the light on the subject may be hard for my meter to interpret correctly. In your example – white, especially true white in a bright (ish) light can fool the ttl meter into underexposing the image and thus making white appear off-gray. Keep in mind that all meters (even in digital cameras) read light in shades of gray. To keep white –true white – you will need to overexpose the image by anything from ½ to 1 full stop (in some situations, such as in bright snow conditions, you may need to compensate by an even greater margin) The same thing occurs when you are attempting to photograph a dark subject – the meter may read the subject as too dark and set an exposure that will make the subject gray. To compensate you set your EC down ½ to 1 stop. The compensation will ensure that your subject is true black. There are many situations in which you may want to use EC – shooting in extreme lighting conditions such as sunrise and sunset; shooting in dim light; shooting in high contrast conditions and similar situations. I know that some people believe that by using the histogram on a digital camera that EC is unnecessary. I still use EC all the time because I don’t trust the histogram 100% - perhaps because I am still new to digital. I often will make an image at the exposure that the ttl meter indicates is correct and then reshoot the same scene using EC. Of-course, if you use manual mode all the time you may be able to skip EC; however, even when shooting manual I sometimes go back to using EC. I hope that this helps. Also, keep asking questions! That is how we all learn. Irene
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
wouldn't matter, it'd make four people saying the same thing.
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Ben F |
Thanks Irene and Co. for your replies.. very helpful. Irene, you mentioned using EC for sunset/sunrise conditions. Would I be right in saying, as sunsets are darker and duller, you could - EC to keep them dark, and sunrises are usually lighter and brighter so use +EC to keep them bright??? I think I get it now, I read a website a few mins ago and he said on it remember the phrase "ADD LIGHT TO MAKE LIGHT" ... works for me.
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