The compensation dial is the feature I use the most on my camera - in fact I use it pretty much every time I take a shot. It enables me to ensure that the subject of the image has the correct exposure, irrespective of the surrounding light.
In the below images, taken on a light box, I exposed exclusively for the tulips, allowing me to best showcase their fine details, thus demonstrating how the exposure dial is a useful tool for controlling artistic choices. Here with the tulips, this was a classic situation where the camera would likely have over-exposed the them. Likewise, had they been on a dark background the camera would probably have made them too light. I often use a black background for my macro work and so the exposure dial is essential to me in ensuring my subjects are correctly exposed. But even when I am shooting landscapes, street photography or portraits I find the dial a super handy tool. And it’s useful to know that a positive setting works well to make snow beautifully white.
For those of you familiar with the exposure dial you will know that its positive values add light and the negative values darken the exposure. Controlling the exposure in this way is a much better system than working on the image with post production which is time consuming. How many stops you need to dial up or down comes intuitively in time and the process is helped by keeping an eye in the histogram which shows the brightness of each pixel: if this slides to the left you need to add light and conversely, if the histogram clips to the right the compensation dial needs to be turned towards the negative values.
It is worth noting that whilst most cameras have an exposure compensation dial it is unlikely to function when the camera is set to an automatic mode.
If you don’t already use the compensation dial, have a go - it’s also a great tool to make you ever more aware of light: essential to successful images.
Don’t forget that if you want to be notified of new blog posts, all you need to do is go to my contact page and write BLOG in the message section, click send, and I will add you to my circulation list. If you are already subscribed maybe recommend the blog to a friend. Thank you for your interest and let’s see what we can learn together.