How to use the exposure compensation button?+/-
The exposure compensation button can be used when your camera is in any non-automatic mode. For example, you can use it while your top dial is on P (for program), S (Nikon shutter priority), TV (Canon shutter priority), A or AV (aperture priority) and M (fully manual) modes.
-For this exercise,
put your camera on the P mode and take one photograph. Now take a second photograph, this time firstly pressing the shutter button half way down to focus (lift up again), then hold down the
+/- compensation button, while turning the main dial to the right 4 stops and shoot. Now look at both images one after another in the LCD screen and you should notice a difference in the lighting.
Now repeat this exercise, this time when taking the 2nd photograph, hold down the compensation button down and turn the main dial 4 stops to the left. Note: it won't need to always be 4 stops, this is an example to show extremes only.
When is exposure compensation useful?If at first, you take an image and it looks to be too dark or too light when viewing it in your LCD screen. For example if it is early morning or late evening, you might want the photograph to appear lighter (or darker) than it actually is.
If you are taking a photograph of an object that is in actual fact too dark, and you want to lighten it. For example if you were taking an image of the underside of a car near the tyre. Bad example I know :) Or lets say you want to photograph a black bird and need to see the actual eye in your image. In this case you could slightly over expose the image to bring out the patterns and shapes.
Exposure compensation is also useful for those people that photograph objects in a light tent. A light tent is a square box that has numerous colored backgrounds so photographers can capture products and objects with one background color. For example, if a white background is used and you don't change the exposure compensation, the background may appear off white.
example
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