Photography

Automatic Setting

Automatic or AUTO mode is the most common option used specially by point-and-shoot photographers. It generally does a fairly good job of obtaining proper exposure in most scenes specially in daylight or at night time with the aid of a basic flash. In fact some compact cameras only have an Automatic mode which is prefered by many people who don't want to trouble themselves with complex camera settings and just want to enjoy the moment.

In some cases, however, the Auto mode will be fooled by the overall lighting of a scene and gives unacceptable results. As discussed in the Light Metering section, the camera gets the average luminousity of the scene within the reference area and adjusts the exposure based on this reading. Center-weighted metering is effective if the scene contains a good distribution of light and dark images. If the scene is mostly bright, the output may become underexposed. If the scene is mostly dark, the output will usually become overexposed. In these cases, using the Partial or Spot metering is more effective as you can narrow down your reference area and base the overall exposure on the specific area where your subject is. This way you can be assured that your subject has proper exposure.

If your camera does not have an option to change the metering mode and by default only uses Center-weighted metering, you may still be able to get a proper exposure by pre-focusing on a different scene with much better lighting. This process could be a bit tricky as you would need to point to a subject in this scene that is approximately the same distance as your actual subject. Pointing to this "dummy subject" half-press the shutter release button to lock the focus and light meter then point your camera back to your actual subject without releasing the shutter release button. When the subject is already in position, fully press the button to record the scene.

In this image for example, the bird is sitting under the shade of a tree and the background light is very bright. The camera's auto exposure averages the overall lighting of the entire scene and returns this balanced image. The problem however is that the shade of the bird falls on the same range as the rest of the shadows under the tree and it comes out too dark and came out only as a silhouette.  To get a better exposure, the lower part of the same branch where the bird is sitting was pre-focused. In this part of the branch, the background is no longer too dominant to influence the average exposure of the scene and the branch appeared much brighter and already contained more details. Here the shutter-release button was half-pressed, locking the focus and exposure. Without releasing the half-pressed shutter-release button, the camera was pointed back to the bird and then fully pressed. The exposure of the result is obviously much better as seen here. The background may appear too bright but the details of the subject, which is more important, is much clearer.

The Exposure Compensation options in your camera would also be a much easier way to solve the exposure problems, if it is available. Simply raise or lower the exposure compensation setting to a level that is enough to give proper exposure on your subject. Most cameras will show a preview of the image after the exposure compensation is applied so adjustments should not be too difficult.