Are you struggling to get well-lit shots? You don’t need any fancy equipment or complex lighting techniques. This guide to the 10 most common exposure problems all photographers face will show you how to avoid them and start taking better pictures today.
At some point most photographers take a picture that doesn’t come out exactly as they expected, it’s either too dark or much lighter than they want it to be.
This might be because of a mistake with the metering, they’ve made an exposure error or because the camera settings are wrong. In this article we explain 10 of the most common exposure problems and how to avoid them.
Exposure Problem 1. White subject made grey
Camera metering systems generally expect the brightness of a scene to average out as a midtone.
There may be very bright and dark sections, but the average brightness is somewhere in between.
So if you fill the frame with a very light subject, a winter landscape or a light, sandy beach, for example, the camera will reduce the exposure to render it a midtone. Hence a white subject is often made grey.
The solution is simple, just use the exposure compensation control to increase the exposure above the value suggested by the camera.
With snow you may need to increase it by over 1EV, perhaps even 2EV.
The key is to keep an eye on the histogram view and increase the exposure until the trace reaches the far right of the scale, indicating that there are some whites in the image.
Don’t increase the exposure too far and introduce a large peak at the right end of the histogram as this means that lots of the highlights are burned out.
Exposure Problem 2. Black subject made grey
This is again caused by the camera’s metering system being confused and expecting the black object to be a midtone.
As before, the solution is to use the exposure compensation control to reduce the exposure and turn the subject black.
Another way to avoid such problems is to put a photographic grey card in the scene and in the same light as the main subject.
Then, set the camera to manual exposure mode and set the metering mode to spot.
Now make sure that the grey card fills the spotmetering area and set the exposure as the camera’s meter suggests.
Next, take the grey card out of the scene and compose the image leaving the exposure settings as they were. The black subject should now be captured as black.
Exposure Problem 3. Camera in the wrong exposure mode
This is a classic error that is most likely to happen if your camera has a mode dial without a lock.
A slight knock, or even just the action of removing the camera from a bag can be enough to knock the dial out of position.
Suddenly, instead of shooting in aperture priority mode in which you set the aperture and the camera sets the shutter speed, you are in manual mode and whichever shutter speed was last selected is being used.
The same problem can arise if you normally shoot in aperture or shutter priority (for example), but occasionally switch to manual to deal with tricky lighting conditions.
If you forget to switch back to the semi-automatic mode and don’t check the camera settings you can shoot away with the wrong exposure set.
The only solution to this problem is to get into the habit of checking the exposure mode before you start shooting – or tape down that pesky mode dial.
Exposure Problem 4. Underexposed back-lit subject
When a subject is lit from behind or is much darker than it’s surroundings a camera can easily be fooled into underexposing the most important part of the image in an attempt to balance the exposure across the frame.
The simplest way to get the exposure right with a backlit subject is to switch to either centre-weighted- or spot-metering.
Centre-weighted metering puts greater emphasis on exposing the centre of the frame correctly, while spotmetering only takes the brightness of the object under the spotmetering area into account when selecting the exposure settings.
Helpfully, many cameras have a custom function (check your camera’s manual for details) that allows the spotmetering area to be linked to the active AF point, so even if your subject is off centre, it will be correctly exposed.
Exposure Problem 5. Spot meter on
Although your camera’s spot meter can be extremely useful, if you forget that it is selected you can end up with some wild exposures.
The problem is that the spotmeter measures the brightness of a very small area of the scene and the camera suggests exposure settings that will render this small target a midtone.
If the spotmetering area falls over a highlight the exposure will be less than it should be and the image will be underexposed.
Conversely, if the metering spot is over a dark part of the scene the image will be overexposed.
The way to avoid such problems is to always remember to turn your camera back to the metering setting that you normally use – evaluative, matrix or multi-zone for example.
If you find that your camera is suggesting widely variable exposure settings, or that you have taken a collection of unexpectedly dark or light images, then check the metering method.
Special note for Canon SLR users
Canon’s iFCL metering system weights the exposure towards what is required by the subject under the active AF point and while this can be very helpful, in high contrast situations it can result in images that are much darker or lighter than expected. If this happens you need to use the exposure compensation system to get the image looking right.
Canon’s iFCL metering system weights the exposure towards what is required by the subject under the active AF point and while this can be very helpful, in high contrast situations it can result in images that are much darker or lighter than expected. If this happens you need to use the exposure compensation system to get the image looking right.
Exposure Problem 6. Underexposed foreground in a landscape
A common problem in landscape photography is that the sky is often much brighter than the land beneath it and this can trick a camera into underexposing the foreground interest in your composition to make the sky look right.
Most photographers solve this problem by using a graduated neutral density filter (also known as an ND Grad) over the lens.
The filter should be positioned so that the dark part covers the bright sky, while the gradient (where the dark and clear parts meet) should be positioned along the horizon.
The filter effectively darkens the sky so that both it and the land can be accurately recorded at the same exposure settings.
Exposure Problem 7. Overexposed clouds in a landscape
Like exposure problem number 6, this can be caused by an imbalance between the brightness of the sky and the ground in a landscape, however in this case the camera’s metering system has favoured the foreground and set an exposure that makes the brightest part of the sky burn out.
As with the previous problem, this can be resolved by using an ND Grad filter to balance out the exposure across the scene or by making use of modern digital technology to create a high dynamic range (HDR) image.
The best HDR photography is made by combining two or more shots that are taken at different exposure settings, with one set for the sky and the other for the land.
These images can then be combined in an image editing package or using specialist HDR software.
Because the two images need to match up it is essential that the camera doesn’t move between them, so it should be mounted on a sturdy tripod.
Exposure Problem 8. Exposure compensation set incorrectly
One of the most common exposure mistakes is to adjust the exposure compensation for an image and then forget to reset it to zero before shooting a different scene.
Before you start shooting try to get into the habit of checking the metering and exposure compensation settings.
But if you find that your camera is producing consistently brighter or darker images than you expect, check the exposure compensation value.
Exposure Problem 9. Shutter speed too slow to freeze movement
When you’re concentrating on getting the exposure so that all the highlights are retained and the shadows aren’t featureless blobs it’s easy to forget that the shutter speed needs to be kept fast enough to freeze any movement in the scene.
It’s a particular problem when shooting in relatively low light indoors or photographing a music gig.
In some cases it may just be a case of opening up the aperture a little more to allow a faster shutter speed, but often you need to increase the sensitivity setting.
Many photographers dread using high sensitivity settings because they are worried about creating images with lots of noise, but provided you keep within the cameras native sensitivity range and don’t use the expansion settings you should be okay.
It’s worth bearing in mind that a noisey image is usually preferable to a blurred one.
Another solution is to use flash to introduce a bit more light and allow a faster shutter speed.
This is fine for indoor portraits of friends and family, but it’s normally frowned upon when shooting gigs and the like, so you’ll have to stick with using high sensitivity settings and wide apertures in these situations.
Exposure Problem 10. Wrong sensitivity setting selected
If you’ve been shooting in low light indoors and without a tripod then the chances are that you’ll have set a high sensitivity setting.
Unless you switch to a lower value when you head outside into the bright sunlight you’ll find that the camera is suggesting very high shutter speeds and small aperture settings.
If the camera is in an automatic or semi-automatic shooting mode in some cases you might find that you can’t take a shot because the maximum shutter speed is exceeded, or minimum aperture setting is not small enough.
Conversely, if you have been shooting in bright light and then go somewhere with much lower lighting the sensitivity value maybe too low so very long exposures are required.
Without a tripod, long exposure settings will result in blurred movement and soft images.
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