How to Use Exposure Compensation on Your Camera

Somewhere on your camera there’s a button with a + and a – on it.

Most people never press it. It is, I reckon, the most useful button on the whole camera, and it takes about ten seconds to learn.

Your camera is guessing

Point your camera at anything and it measures the light coming back. Then it works out a brightness.

Here’s the bit that matters: it always aims for mid grey. Not “correct”. Mid grey. That’s the only target it has.

Most of the time that works fine, because most scenes average out to something like mid grey. But some don’t.

Point it at snow and the camera thinks: that’s very bright, I’d better calm it down. So it does, and your snow comes out grey. It has done exactly what it was designed to do and produced a photo nobody wanted.

Same thing on a bright beach. Same thing on wet sand with the sun on it. If you photograph the coast, this happens to you constantly.

It works the other way too. Point it at something very dark and the camera brightens it up, and your moody shot arrives looking washed out and disappointing.

The fix

Find the +/– button.

• Photo too dark? Press +.
• Photo too bright? Press –.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. You’re telling the camera “I know what you think, do it brighter anyway.”

You’ll see a little scale, usually running from –2 to +2. Those are stops. One full stop is double or half the light. For snow or a bright beach, somewhere between +1 and +2 usually sorts it.

Two things worth knowing

It works in A, S and P. Not in full auto. If your dial is on the green square or on a scene mode, the camera won’t let you argue with it. Put it on A (or Av) and you’re in business.

In full manual it does nothing at all, unless you switch auto ISO on. Then it works again.

It changes something you might care about. The camera has to get that extra light from somewhere:

• In aperture priority, it changes the shutter speed. Push it far enough and the shutter gets slow enough to blur.
• In shutter priority, it changes the aperture. Which changes how much is in focus.
• In program, it changes the shutter speed too.

So if you’re handheld, or something is moving, keep half an eye on what’s shifting.

The one that catches everyone

Put it back to zero when you’re done.

Otherwise you wander off, photograph something else entirely, and wonder for twenty minutes why every single frame is too bright. I have done this. More than once.

So

Your camera aims for mid grey and nothing else. When the scene isn’t grey — snow, sand, a bright sky, or something deliberately dark — it will get it wrong in a completely predictable direction.

Press + for brighter, – for darker, then set it back to zero.

Ten seconds to learn, and it’ll save more photographs than any lens you could buy.