What is Exposure Compensation?

Hi everybody. Welcome to Episode 29 of the Photography Explained podcast.

I’m Rick McEvoy and I explain one photographic thing per episode in plain English in less that 10 minutes without the irrelevant detail. I have well over 30 years of experience in photography so I do know what I am talking about!

In this episode

Exposure compensation is a feature in cameras allowing you to quickly adjust the suggested camera settings to get a better exposure than would be achieved with the suggested camera settings. On a Canon DSLR this is done simply by rotating the quick control wheel on the back of the camera.

What’s next?
Episode 30 – What Have We Learned About Exposure?

Transcript

 Hi, everybody, welcome to Episode 29 of the photography explained podcast. In this episode, what is exposure compensation? Exciting?

Hey, I'm your host Rick, and each week I will try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 10 minutes without the irrelevant details. My aim is to explain things in just enough detail to help you and I with our photography, and no more.

And slow down. Sorry I was getting a bit excited there as I am getting towards a big number (30 by the way – I know…)

What is exposure compensation?
Exposure compensation is a feature in cameras allowing you to quickly adjust the suggested camera settings to get a better exposure than will be achieved with the suggested camera settings. On a Canon DSLR, which I use, this is done simply by rotating the quick control reel on the back of the camera. Did I say control real then?

Sorry – quick control dial.

Why is this useful? This is one of those times when I had to get the books out. Some people might be shocked by that. But it's a few fundamental things that I quite often get wrong. This is one of them.

So why is exposure compensation useful?
Well meters on cameras tend to read everything as 18% grey. So if you photograph a scene with a lot of snow, or a white beach – well anything with lots of white in it, but we'll stick with snow because this is a great example.

If you didn't do anything about it, the snow would look grey, it wouldn't look crisp, and white, it'd look dreadful.

And if you photograph something that was predominantly black, this would also be more grey than black. I don't mean grey, grey, but like the snow would be a grey white. And the black thing would be more of grey black.

A quick fix to the problem
Exposure compensation is a quick way to give an image more or less exposure, which will help you to get true whites and true blacks, which at the end of the day are what you're looking at when you take a photo. And that's what we want to recreate.

Back to the snow
To photograph snow, for example, you need to apply one or two stops of positive compensation. Going back to my quick control dial, that should be to three to six turns (clicks) to the right (more on that in a minute).

So how does exposure compensation work?
As I said on a Canon 6D, which I use (yes, I still use a Canon 6D Mk 1would you believe), you turn the quick control dial to the right to give more exposure.

What about other cameras than Canon?
I have no idea how the makers of other cameras do this to be perfectly honest with you, but the principles are the same. Check out your camera manual (which you've all gone and read of course after listening to a previous episode), and you'll be able to find out for yourself.

Thinking about it. If I was going to tell you how to do this on every camera we would be here for more than 10 minutes wouldn't we! 10 years more like.

So when should you adjust the exposure?
Basically, when there's a lot of white or a lot of black in a photo. Also in tricky lighting when the camera doesn't give you the exposure you want.

Another new thing – clipping warning
On your camera, there's a setting you can use. You can use this setting on lots of cameras. 

It's called highlight clipping – this is where you haven't recorded all the highlights. And if you get that set, if there's any clipping in a photo, it appears like a blinking thing normally flashing red on the screen that tells you that something needs to be adjusted.

Some people call this blinkies. I don’t.

Histograms
The histogram is a very handy thing which i'll come on to in another episode. But for now we'll stick with exposure compensation.

So the exposure isn't correct or isn't good enough- this when you use exposure compensation. Cameras these days are very clever last technology packed into them. 

Not as good as humans!
Camera are clever but they're still not as good as human eyes and the brain that receives and processes the images - nowhere near actually. That's why you can't take everything that you can see in a scene in one photo, ordinarily,

Unless you got a very, very expensive camera, another one for another time.

So what's one stop exposure compensation?
This is when you adjust the exposure by a full stop. This halves or doubles the amount of light that gets to the camera sensor. On my Canon 6D the dial(I’m sure it is called a wheel) goes in third stop increments. So three clicks to the right is a full stop three clicks to the left is a full stop.

I didn't need to tell you that second bit did I? That was blindingly obvious.

Does exposure compensation increase noise?
No, it does not. It's just a technique to quickly change the camera settings. If you're going to Google, this is a surprising frequently asked question, which I thought I'd throw in here and save you reading this question in Google.

Don't forget, you're not doing anything funky, it's not doing any trickery or anything, it's just another way of changing the exposure of an image, it's a quick way, in a conscious way you can change the exposure.

So what changes with exposure compensation?
Now, when I say what changes I mean what physically happens, this was another bit that I wasn't really sure about, I'm not gonna lie to you. And there is a little twist at the end of this too.

This is how exposure compensation works on my Canon 6D

Shutter Priority Mode (Tv)
With my Canon 6D in shutter priority mode (I'll come on to camera modes in probably the next episode), this is called TV for time value, the aperture changes by the amount of exposure compensation selected.

Shutter priority is a picture taking mode where you select the shutter speed and the camera chooses the aperture.

And unusually in photography, this one makes sense.

Aperture Priority Mode (Av)
In aperture priority mode, the shutter speed is changed by the application of exposure compensation. Aperture priority is the picture taking mode where you select the aperture and the camera selects the shutter speed/

This makes sense as well.

Programme AE Mode (P)
In Programme AE, (using Canon terms here, so apologies if you are a user of any other manufacturer of camera), exposure compensation changes both the shutter and the aperture.

So bear that in mind if you're in Programme AE mode, (and it's not P for professional, P for programme).

What modes does exposure compensation work in?
As I said, on my Canon 6D, exposure compensation works in Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and Programme AE modes.

It cannot be used in manual mode.
Now, this is where I have a bit of a problem. I put my camera in manual mode, I turn the exposure compensation will and it worked. It changed the aperture. Now maybe I've made a funky custom setting somewhere which I don't remember, but I've either come for a number of years now.

But yeah, lets say it can't be used in manual mode.

And what about all those creative modes?
I mean the ones that you get the nice little pictures of someone swimming or running or fishing or climbing or paachuting or whatever else.

I don't think exposure compensation works in those.

Does exposure compensation affect image quality?
No, it does not – it is just a technique that changes camera settings. This is another frequently asked question in Google, which I was surprised to see which I'm happy to put to bed here.

Does exposure compensation affect RAW files?
Well, yes. Because all you're doing is changing the camera settings. The RAW file is what you tell the camera to record with the settings you've selected. It's no different to using manual mode and selecting settings no different at all. Again, another frequently asked question, according to the Google.

But exposure compensation does not affect image quality – RAW or JPEG.

How do you set exposure compensation in manual mode?
Well, I've got ahead of myself before didn't I - I've already told you about my miraculous Canon 6D which does exposure compensation in manual mode.

So I'll move on from that. Sorry about that. I should take that one ocean.

Right recap.
Exposure compensation is a feature in cameras allowing you to quickly adjust the suggested camera settings to get a better exposure that will be achieved with the suggested camera settings. You need to remember one thing - the camera doesn't know what it's looking at. It's just looking. It's being pointed at something and it's making calculations without the the intelligence of the human eye and brain. I use that term loosely, certainly excluding myself from that!

Things for you to do

1 - I want you to do this one thing for me.
Try exposure compensation. See how you get on with it

2 - Tell me how it went on Twitter - send me a message @rickphoto

3 - Subscribe to my podcast
If you enjoyed this episode of course. This helps me.

4 - Rate and review my podcast
If you've enjoyed this episode of course. This helps me. Five star ratings would be wonderful too!

5 - Tell someone you know about my podcast.
This also helps me especially if it's someone who's interested in photography and you think might enjoy my English ramblings

Okay, nearly done next episode.

In the next episode, I think I'm just going to get straight into the different image capture modes. Make sense? I've mentioned them for the first time here, and I am trying to get a logic and a flow, so one episode follows on from another one. So there's a, you know, a bit of a bit of a logic as I said to each episode.

Thank you
Okay, thank you very much for listening to my small but perfectly formed podcast. Check out my website, rickmcevoyphotography.com, where you can find out all about me and my architectural and construction photography work, as well as my blog where you can learn lots more about photography.

You can also find all the episodes that have been published to date, and also a list of the questions. I was going to get onto that. Let me know if there is a photography thing that you want me to explain, and I will add it to my list. Just check out my Photography Explained website and click on the podcast tile. The pages are easy to find. If I explain your thing, I'll give you a shout out on that episode and also a link to your website if you have one. 

This episode (which has gone over 10 minutes, but I don't really care. It's fine) was brought to you by the power of Yorkshire tea. No, I'm not sponsored by them. That's the tea I drink. It's a bit early for anything else. But after this who knows.

I've been Rick McEvoy. Thanks again for listening to me and for giving me 10 minutes of your valuable time. And I will see you on the next episode. Cheers from me, Rick.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

exposure compensation, camera, photography, aperture, manual mode, exposure, settings, episode, photo, mode, podcast, rick, canon, programme, frequently asked question, select, shutter, image, adjust, explain

​​Transcribed by https://otter.ai