I recommend to any aspiring photographer that you actively use your camera’s automation whenever possible. This includes matrix exposure metering, autofocus, automatic white balance, and anything else that lends itself to automation, and that modern cameras are often better at than modern photographers. Put all the black work on the camera, and pay more attention to finding good-looking subjects and composing your shots in harmony.
Exposure Correction + White Balance + Picture Style
This is a different matter. I reduced the exposure by 1.3 feet (- 1.3 EV), changed the white balance to cloudy, chose a vivid image style and added 2 points of color saturation (saturation). As a result, the juicy colors of the sunset sky were fully revealed.
It turns out that a few simple manipulations can significantly improve the look of your pictures. I mean your good pictures. Average pictures with a poor composition or dull lighting won’t stop being average no matter how much you tinker with your camera settings.
The two most important settings that you should be able to adjust are exposure compensation and white balance. All cameras have these settings – the only difference is the ease of use. The more expensive cameras allow you to adjust exposure and white balance directly, while the cheaper ones might make you poke around in the menus. Check your camera’s manual for more details.
Keep in mind that the much-loved green (AUTO) mode for beginners usually doesn’t allow the photographer to control exposure, white balance, or many other useful camera options. The same applies to stupid scene modes (portrait, landscape, macro, etc.) that greatly limit your imagination.
Be wise and shoot in one of the four traditional professional modes: P, A, S, M or P, Av, Tv, M. All of them (except for the manual mode M) can be automated just as well as the modes for housewives, but they leave you the freedom to control any camera settings according to the specific photographic situation. Read more about shooting modes in our article “Camera Modes”.
Exposure compensation
Exposure compensation is used to force changes in exposure in automatic modes. The matrix exposure metering of modern cameras works well in most situations, but it can be wrong in difficult lighting conditions. Many cameras tend to overexpose when the contrast of the scene is high, as well as underexpose when shooting low-contrast light scenes. It is for these cases that exposure compensation is invented . If the picture is too light, you decrease the exposure, i.e. introduce a negative correction and get a correctly exposed frame. If the picture is too dark, the exposure must be increased.