repleo Loc: Boston

I use EC in combination with the histogram and the zebra stripes for minor tweaks in live view a lot.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

EC is primarily used in aperture priority and shutter priority modes on modern DSLRs. These are semi-auto modes where either the shutter speed (in aperture priority), or the aperture (in shutter priority) are automatically selected to provide the "best" exposure. EC is the tool that allows the photographer to tweak that exposure to his liking when using those modes. Without it the camera would have the final word on exposure. EC is also available on some cameras when shooting in manual mode and auto ISO is being used. In that specific situation with Auto ISO and a specific shutter speed and aperture set, EC can be used to actually tweak the Auto ISO value to your liking. This can be much quicker in fast changing lighting conditions than explicitly resetting the ISO each time the light changes.

tomcat

Thank you!!! You have just illustrated my point over this idiotic notion of EC. If you have a light object on a dark background, for example a wedding dress, you use spot metering, meter the dress and make the exposure. None of this "exposure compensation" is necessary. Just meter for the subject and take the shot. As I said in an earlier post, in all my years of taking pictures (and there were hundreds of wedding dresses, prom dresses, white Mustangs, etc) I never ever used EC. Just used spot metering, read the subject, and took the shot. Is EC, the lazy man's way of shooting now-a-days (or is it ignorance)?

h2scheer

EC is useful if your camera is fooled by lighting conditions such as beach and snow scenes. But if there is a wide range of contrast between light and dark, HDR might be a better tool to maintain detail from light areas to dark areas.

phlash46 Loc: Westchester County, New York

gym Loc: Athens, Georgia

Toment Loc: FL, IL

ETTR or ETTL is your preference
Have fun, like what you do, don't second guess your taste.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

Your response is not astute. Spot metering a white dress does not give an accurate reading any more than averaging the whole scene does. In either case EC is used to bias the light meter reading because the metered area is not 18 percent gray. The easiest method is viewing the histogram and adjusting EC for correct exposure.

If new using new technology confuses you it is unfortunate.

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

I use EC when it's 4:00 p.m. and the sun doesn't set until 8:00 p.m. but I need a sunset picture now rather than waiting for four hours.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

I remember taking a basic photography class at our local college way back in the days of film cameras. The second assignment was to use bracketed images of carefully metered gray cards and selected images followed by very carefully developing the film to determine if our irises were calibrated properly and our shutter speeds were correct.

It is far less likely that today's digital cameras have shutter speed errors, but I have seen lenses (especially lower cost ones) which may have been assembled incorrectly or have other internal faults resulting in consistently wrong exposure. Also...as lenses get older, the lubrication can get gummy, causing the auto-diaphragm not to work as fast as it should (or maybe not at all).

If you see that you are having consistent errors (usually less than one stop) in the same direction, I'd suggest that you first audit your metering process and technique. If that doesn't lead to the desired improvement, you can do a similar experiment to make sure that your body adn lens are really exposing for ISO 400 (or other setting) when you are set to that ISO.

LP

Rich1939 Loc: Pike County Penna.

In all your years of ..............
You always used EC ! When spot metering a wedding dress I'll bet you used the meter's reading and based on experience you did an Exposure Correction from there. EC is handy when you are going to be taking a rapid series of shots using either aper. or shutter priority, in a situation where the lighting will fool the camera's metering.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

I always determine by individual situations, some people like to expose to the right, and it has some merit, but not always! A safe amount would be I think around, maybe a 3/4 stop!

MtnMan Loc: ID

It is accurate. It will yield just what it is supposed to: a 12% gray dress for the area metered.

MtnMan Loc: ID

And some like to underexpose.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

The dress isn't even close to 12% gray!

The measurement is precise for what it measures, but does not provide accurate exposure.

EC is the answer and the histogram is how to judge the adjustment.