If you’ve just taken the exciting train from the amateur photographer who owns a new SLR camera, congratulations, you’ve already started playing with all the little buttons, nuts and wheels of your camera fervently. You’ve probably also focused, on the main wheel you’ve tried the modes (even if you haven’t seen too much difference between the two, well yes, have you seen that in automatic the images are great and in manual nothing comes out of nowhere?). You’ve also tried really nice effects with your camera: black and white, miniature effect, and I don’t know how many other tricks.
All this with the instruction manual wide open in front of you. The truth is that you have not skipped from page 1, but it is fine because you offered to read it from cover to cover as we always recommend in this blog. . In a few minutes the manual is still open to the same page and you’re already yawning. You leave it for later, yes, yes, of course. Now he prefers to learn by experimenting. When you’re done with the main wheel, you’ll notice that there are quite a few buttons here and there. Some seem to do nothing for themselves. You play around with them a bit but you don’t get anything clear. Are you already going to consult it in your manual, which is still there seeing you open to the same page where you left it at the beginning of this story? But that moment of magical encounter between the instruction manual and the user manual never happens. And since you already have enough with the rest of the functions (in fact you have enough and you have some left) the years go by and you still don’t know why some of these buttons? Does this +/- symbol sound familiar to you? Aren’t you the least curious? I promise to try to guide you to the answer a little more happily than your instruction manual. Follow me! ?
- I know curiosity is killing you.
- So in order not to make you suffer anymore I’m going to tell you what the mysterious button is: the exposure compensation button.
- Since you’re staying with this title.
- I haven’t improved the manual much.
- I know.
- Do I promise to improve it from now on? But for this we will start from the beginning.
All digital cameras have something built in that we know as a photometer or exposure meter. Is it just a sensor that receives the light from the scene and gives it to us? exposure so that our image is neither underexposed (dark) nor overexposed (burned). So far easy, not much to do. Except these photometers often run into situations where the tonal conditions of the environment can mislead them. Compensating in snowy landscapes may sound familiar to you, right? This is because the photometer is programmed to measure medium gray scenes. If another shade dominates the environment, the light meter draws on it as a medium gray. This leads us to the fact that in scenes where white dominates, the photometer gives us values for a scene with a medium gray tone, leaving us with a grayish scene (underexposed) since it interprets that there is too much light. in the scene (although it is actually white), or in scenes where black is predominant, it tends to overexpose itself thinking that it is too dark, when what happens is that the dominant color is simply black. It is then when, if we want a correct exposition, we have to take charge of the exposition to show us the world as we perceive it; with its pure black and white, textured, etc. Also, if you want to convey different sensations by playing with light (intentionally darkening or brightening the scene), you need to control the exposure.
The Exposure Control button allows you to change the exposure settings your camera gives you after you’ve taken the right measure. And you say, “Well, but that’s what we always do in manual mode, what’s the difference?Well, here’s the grace of this system: it allows you to work in any priority mode of your camera but controlling the exposure whenever you need it.
In other words, you don’t need to work manually to have full exposure control, but you can set your camera to one of the aperture priority or shutter priority (semi-automatic) modes. and control exposure as efficiently and control as you would in manual mode.
We always praise the goodness of the manual way when we want to control all aspects of the scene, but the truth is that different situations and day to day make it not always the ideal way to work. Many photographers decide to work with semi Automatic modes to be faster, then you only lose control of the scene. The exposure control button allows us to combine the agility of automatic modes with the exposure control that would give us a manual mode.
As announced above, the exposure control button is effective when you’re working in semi-automatic mode, in manual it doesn’t make sense because we already control all aspects of the scene, and automatically don’t control anything at all, so it doesn’t help us either?But let’s see how it works exactly for each of the semi-automatic modes
As you well know, in this mode we prioritize speed and, therefore, it is the value that we decide and adjust manually, letting the camera choose the other value; Opening. In this case, the exposure control button allows us to change this automatic value (opening) without having to change the shooting mode, so if in a scene you consider that the aperture value given to you by the camera is not appropriate, you can change it quickly with the exposure control button.
In this mode, however, our priority is openness, either to control the amount of light entered by our target, or the depth of field, once we set the aperture, it is the camera that chooses the shutter speed. to the exposure control button, we can also control this value whenever we are interested.
On some camera models, the exposure control button is located in the upper right area of the camera, near the shutter and matches the / – symbol. On other models, it is located on the back of the camera also with the / – symbol or has its own display wheel, is it a matter of locating it with the naked eye or using the user manual?
Mastering the exhibition in photography is everything. We’ve said it a hundred times and we’ll probably continue to do it a few more times, and while the exposure control button may not be the first stop you make in this photo world, this is one of the stops I recommend. Once you’re a little familiar with openings, speeds, exposures and different shooting modes, when it’s all part of your life (will it be sooner than you imagine, you see?) Or if so, give this little dishonest system the opportunity to quickly and effectively control its exposure?
I hope this article was helpful to you, if that’s the case I’d appreciate it if you’d share it with someone who can benefit from it. Thank you very much and until next time?