Struggling With Digital Cameras

Maybe it’s just me or do other people have this problem too? For years I got mixed up with exposure values. The larger the number, the smaller the opening and the smaller the number, the larger the opening for the light to enter. I always found this confusing.


When I finally got it right, I changed to digital cameras, some of which no longer use the traditional exposure values or method. The feature most point & shoot digital cameras have, is called “exposure compensation”. This lets you increase or decrease the amount of light the camera captures.
The range is usually adjustable from -2 to +2, with 0 being the default setting. To allow more light into the camera, set the exposure compensation to a positive value, to allow less light, set it to a negative value. Now that is much easier to remember: + means more and – means less light. You can use this feature to shoot in very bright sunlight conditions (and haven’t we got plenty of these!). Set the value to a negative value and your image will be less exposed. You’ll generally find it’s easier to retrieve detail from an underexposed image that it is to put detail back into an overexposed image.

Some cameras have a feature called bracketing, which is an automatic feature that shoots a series of images one after the other at different exposure settings one default, one negative and one positive. If you’re unsure as to wether or not the light is sufficient to take a good shot, set the camera to bracket the shots (don’t forget though that your memory use on your card will triple).