Exposure Compensation
By Jakob Jelling, Fri Dec 9th

The digital camera is in reality a great possession with manyfacets of its utilities and not only that knowing theseutilities makes the understanding the digital camera complete.The utilities are also so very diverse that they too offerfurther introspection of details in their varying applications.Such an area is digital camera exposure compensation. Onlyknowledge of digital camera exposure is not enough, so thedigital camera exposure compensation requires some amount ofexposure in itself! This discussion is focused towards thatcause itself.

Looking at different digital cameras, even temperately costingdigital have arrangements for exposure compensationsettings. To explain in a bit detail, the exposure compensationallows the users to control the amount of light entering thelens. And thereby the illumination of the photograph is decided.Exposure compensation can be altered manually or by the help ofa digital camera's exposure compensation setting that lets oneoverride the metered exposure set inside the digital cameraitself. Strictly speaking, the exposure values provide anexpedient line of attack to put a figure on the available lightintensity and therefore exposure.

As per general norms of the users of digital cameras, certainstandards exist for selecting such values. These values arespecifically known as Exposure Values (EV). Selecting an up tostandard Exposure Values (EV) helps maintain the detailscontained in dark areas of a photo, or diminish the more thanusually bright areas. Again, looking from technical point ofview, the Exposure Values are numbers that refer to anassortment of combinations of apertures of lenses

and shutterspeed respectively. They have a selective range of values,ranging between -2 to +2 Exposure Values (EV). As a general rulepositive exposure settings are used for cases where bulky areasof a scene are especially bright such as taking pictures of asnow scene and also during times of photographing when thebackground is a good deal brighter than the focal area underconsideration. Also, negative exposure settings are used forcases where bulky areas of a scene are especially dark and alsoduring times of photographing when the background is a good dealdarker than the fore area under consideration.

One point that is worth noting is that light meters cannot seecolor. They deliver every scene as 18% middle gray and becomeaccustomed to the exposure accordingly. And most digital cameraswill allows a photographer to compensate the exposure by 1 to 2EV plus or minus in 1/3 or 1/2 stop increments. A very importantrealization for any photographer is that the right exposure isonly "correct" in the eye of the photographer; Exposure Valuecompensation can also be used as a creative tool.

With this information available to the users of the digitalcamera, the knowledge of digital camera exposure as well asdigital camera exposure compensation becomes. But it is onlyknowledge, the proper acquiring of the whole feel comes onlyfrom personal experience.

About the author:Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.snapjunky.com. Visithis digital camera guide and learn how to take better pictureswith your digicam.