The point about allowing gadgetry to trump artistry is well taken, but any camera is just a gadget: why not be a “real” artist and paint a picture?

For those who do product photography, portraiture, landscape, or other disciplines where time isn’t critical, your point about taking the time for perfect composition and exposure is valid.

For those like me who shoot a lot of sports, or really any one who does event photography, these tools can be really helpful. The reality of sports photography is that conditions change. Half of the potential subjects are wearing dark clothing the other half are light. Parts of a field or arena might be in harsh light, parts might be in shadow. The players won’t always be the same distance away from you. In situations like this, any help that your camera can give you before you shoot and any help that your software can give you after a shoot are totally worth it. It’s enough challenge for this amateur to just get the focus sharp and the composition close enough that I can crop it the rest of the way in post.

To each their own though – just because your camera has a feature doesn’t mean that you have to use it.

I find that the more usual use for EV in winter conditions is the opposite. The camera sees a white dominated scene and underexposes to bring the average back to a middle grey. But of course snow should be white, so the average should really be balanced towards the bright end. Adding between 1/3 and 1 stop using EV is my usual snow setup.

While I agree you should prevent clipping highlights, I would recommend exposing so you’re as close to the ‘bright’ edge as possible, to retain maximum detail. Underexposing in post provides much better results than overexposing (which would be necessary with the second example, to get a properly exposed image).

This all seems like an overly complex method of good old manual exposure bracketing. Why bother with another useless function to fiddle with on your camera? Concentrate more on composing the image and less on button pushing. Just open or close the dag-gone Iris as you see fit and go make art.

Bilka

1. The camera uses it’s best judgement as to what a “correct” exposure looks like.

2. To adjust the exposure, the camera will automatically play with the factors that affect exposure (shutter speed, aperture and ISO) depending on the camera mode (and the camera).
2a. If it’s one of the automatic modes (full auto, portrait, scenery, etc.), the camera will freely play with all three factors.
2b. In aperture priority, it can only play with shutter and ISO, while in shutter priority, it will only play with the aperture and ISO.
2c. In P* mode (I forget what P* stands for), you can play with one and the camera will adjust the other; i.e., play with the shutter and the camera will adjust the aperture and vice versa.
2d. In full manual, the camera is kicked out of the sandbox and doesn’t get to play with anything at all.

3. To judge what a “correct” exposure looks like, the camera uses the built-in light meter and aims for a preset exposure setting. It basically looks at the scene, measures the brightness and tries to adjust the exposure so that the average brightness of the scene will match an arbitrary benchmark (often quoted as “18% grey”).

4. One way you can influence how the camera judges what a “correct” exposure will look like by telling the camera *what* to measure:
4a. measuring the brightness of the entire scene (average weighted metering) works well with low contrast scenes
4b. measuring the brightness of a portion of the scene (center weighted metering) works well with “contrast-y” scenes like at the beach
4c. measuring the brightness of a tiny spot within the scene (spot metering) is useful for scenes with extreme bright or dark spots or for instances when the photographer decides to bring out the detail in a particular part of the subject (like the eyes on a face or the frieze on a wall). the photographer is basically saying i want *this* part “correctly” exposed even if it fraks the rest of the picture.

5. After all is said and done, the camera’s judgement of a “correct” exposure is completely ARBITRARY and you, the photographer, may freely disagree. If you think the camera is making the exposure too dark, you can compensate (which is why it’s called exposure compensation) by telling the camera to underexpose (brighten it up). If you think the camera is making the scene too bright, you can tell the camera to overexpose (darken it).

Is this correct?

it helps to just add the word “light” (in your head) in between the “+” and “-”.

Just conceptualize: ” + <<>> – “