3 Keys To Better Exposure

What is exposure? 

Exposure is controlling the amount of light entering the camera.  

Why is exposure important? 

It's necessary to have good exposure in order to capture good quality images.

How do you know whether to use the auto or manual exposure setting?  

If the entire scene is evenly lit like the image on the left, then the auto exposure setting is fine.  But if there is a discrepancy between the lighting on your subject (people or objects) and the lighting on the background, then it all depends on what you decide is the focus of the shot.  

Example #1:  Background is Brighter than the Subject

Let us say you have a bunch of people in the foreground, in the shade and the area behind them is in bright sunlight.  If your camera is set to auto exposure, the people's faces will be dark without much detail because they camera is trying to "average" the dark and the bright spots of the image. 

So, you would have to set the camera to a manual exposure, focus on the faces and select an exposure that allows you to see the details in the people's faces.  You will lose detail in the background because the background will be overexposed.  It's not ideal, but that's all you can do.

Maybe you want the lush landscape behind the people to be the focus.  If that is so, the people in the foreground will be silhouettes in order for the background to be correctly exposed.

Here's an example where auto exposure would have made the bride's face too dark.  By setting the exposure to manual and compensating for a bright background, we can see the bride's face.

Example #2: Background is Darker than the Subject

Let us say you have a spotlight on a bride and groom as they dance their first dance together. Most auto exposure systems will overexpose the subject (the couple) to compensate for the dark background.  So in this case, you would switch to manual exposure and bring the exposure down so the couple is well exposed and let the background go dark. 

What are three ways to get a better exposure?

TIP 1:.  Change your angle and composition so you don't have a bright background.  Make the foreground and background as equal as possible in terms of lighting.

TIP 2:  Zoom in or get closer so that the primary subject fills most of the frame.  Therefore, the lighting on the background is not an issue.

TIP 3:  Add supplemental light to the foreground subject.

What is the key to good exposure?  Understand how YOUR camera responds to different lighting situations and experiment with different settings to get the best results.