{"id":1501,"date":"2012-08-27T09:33:27","date_gmt":"2012-08-27T08:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/test\/?p=1501"},"modified":"2012-08-27T09:34:01","modified_gmt":"2012-08-27T08:34:01","slug":"exposure-compensation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/?p=1501","title":{"rendered":"Exposure Compensation ~ Basics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"expo<\/a>In my book there are two fundamentals to what makes a photo good or bad and they are proper focus and a perfect exposure. Get either of these things wrong and you\u2019re fighting an up hill battle from the off. <\/p>\n

In this post I\u2019ll look at exposure compensation which allows you to override the camera\u2019s suggested exposure and make your image lighter or darker as you require. Although the name may vary a bit, almost all cameras have this function. You\u2019re looking for a button that has a half white, half black square and has the plus minus symbols\u2026 Basically something like the image on the right.<\/p>\n

Why compensate?<\/font><\/u><\/strong>
In this modern age of digital everything you may be wondering why the cameras exposure wouldn\u2019t be right all the time. By now some boffin must have figured out a way to get the perfect exposure, right? Well that\u2019s nearly right and every new camera that comes out gets better and better at nailing the exposure but there are two problems. Firstly all metering systems start with the theory that the world (on average) is a mid grey, That\u2019s great most of the time except for the times when it\u2019s not, like when photographing snow or someone wearing black.<\/p>\n

\"0<\/a>   \"<\/a>
The white shell in the centre of the frame has caused a small amount of under exposure.
Dial in +1 stop of exposure compensation and the exposure is correct.<\/font><\/p>\n

The second problem is exposure is often open to interpretation. A scene where the exposure is biased to highlights will look very different to one where it\u2019s biased to the shadows.<\/p>\n

Compensation in action
<\/font><\/u><\/strong>If you move the exposure compensation to the left you\u2019re adding negative exposure and your photo will be darker. This is great when photographing dark subjects or when you want to capture highlight detail. <\/p>\n

Moving exposure compensation to the right makes your photo\u2019s brighter, perfect for photographing light things like snow, sandy beaches and backlit scenes.<\/p>\n

\"-2<\/a>\"-1<\/a>\"0<\/a>\"<\/a>\"<\/a>
Click on an image to enlarge<\/font>
<\/font><\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/font><\/u><\/strong> <\/p>\n

When in doubt try taking the photo at a couple of different exposures but always remember once you\u2019re done with exposure compensation reset it to zero.<\/p>\n

Fix it in Photoshop<\/u><\/strong><\/font>
I love Photoshop but fixing exposure in Photoshop isn\u2019t a long term plan you should stick with. Yes I know the RAW format gives you latitude of exposure you don\u2019t get in JPG but adjusting exposure AFTER you\u2019re taken the image will slow your workflow down and degrade the image. Both of these things may be slight but they add up. More over getting the image right in camera helps you to see the photographs not just take them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my book there are two fundamentals to what makes a photo good or bad and they are proper focus and a perfect exposure. Get either of these things wrong and you\u2019re fighting an up hill battle from the off. In this post I\u2019ll look at exposure compensation which allows you to override the camera\u2019s … Continue reading Exposure Compensation ~ Basics<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1501"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1503,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501\/revisions\/1503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}