What is Exposure Compensation?

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

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.

You can listen to the episode here

Or keep on reading. Or do both. Entirely up to you!

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 a grey black.

A quick fix to the problem

Exposure compensation is a quick way to give an image more or less exposure (more or less light), which will help you to get true whites and true blacks, which at the end of the day are what you’re looking for when you take a photo. And that’s what we want to recreate – what is there.

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 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, more light.

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 turn this on in your camera, if there’s any clipping in a photo, it appears like a blinking thing, flashing red or white on the camera LCD screen, telling 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 the histogram is another way of the camera telling you that the exposure for an image is not correct.

But for now, we’ll stick with exposure compensation.

So if the exposure isn’t correct or isn’t good enough, this is when you use exposure compensation. Cameras these days are very clever with lots of technology packed into them.

Not as good as humans!

Cameras 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, and three clicks to the left is another 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 youself.

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, and 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 cameras), 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 wheel 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 had the camera for a number of years now. So who knows?

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 parachuting 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 the settings, no different at all. Again, another frequently asked question, according to 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.

Right quick recap.

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. 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 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

Send me a message on Twitter to @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 logical flow, so that one episode follows on from another one. So there’s a, you know, a bit of a bit of logic as I said to each episode.

And then I changed my mind – the next episode is Photography Explained Podcast Episode 30 – What Have We Learned About Exposure?

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 am planning to answer. 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 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 in the next episode.

Cheers from me, Rick

OK – that was the podcast episode.

Want to know more?

Head over to the Start page on the Photography Explained Podcast website to find out more.

And here is the list of episodes published to date – you can listen to any episode straight from this page which is nice.

Let me know if there is a photography thing that you want me to explain and I will add it to my list. Just head over to the This is my list of things to explain page of this website to see what is on there already.

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And finally a little bit about me

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Thank you

Thanks for listening to my podcast (if you did) and reading this blog post (which I assume you have done as you are reading this).

Cheers from me Rick