[Photography Basics] [Hosted by Madison Murphy] Hey, Madison here.

Today's question comes from Max.

Max writes, "I leave my camera on its automatic settings.

But sometimes my pictures still ends up too light or dark.

Why?"

Good question, Max.

That happens to me too, especially when I shoot in bright sunlight or a really dark place.

I know my camera is trying to make adjustments, because I see the numbers changing on the display.

But I really don't know what it's doing or if I should switch a setting.

Let's ask one of our experts.

Hi, Madison.

What you are seeing when the number changes on the display is the camera trying to find the right exposure.

Exposure is the amount of light collected by your camera's image sensor.

If too much light hits your image sensor your picture gets overexposed and appears too bright.

If too little light hits the sensor, your picture will be underexposed and appears too dark.

Every time you push the shutter button down halfway your camera calibrates how much light is needed for a correct exposure.

Just like your pupils open and close to let more or less light pass through, depending on the brightness of your environment, your camera makes similar adjustments.

When your camera is in full auto mode, it does this in 3 ways.

It opens and closes the aperture, a hole in the middle of your lens that controls how much light gets in, it adjusts the shutter speed, which controls how long the light hits the image sensor, and it changes the ISO, or how sensitive the image sensor is to light.

Unless you do a manual override your camera constantly balances these 3 things to try to find the right exposure.

When one changes, the others usually do too.

When a manual override is in place, like setting a thick shutter speed to stop motion, only the other 2 settings will adjust.

If you suspect that your camera is not capturing the lighting in your scene correctly, especially in extreme lighting conditions, try bracketing.

This means taking the same shot at a couple of different exposures.

Do this by locating your exposure compensation override and adjusting your exposure.

Check out your camera's manual to learn how to do this.

And finally, if your camera doesn't allow this level of control, or you already have an image that is incorrectly exposed, you can likely save the image using Lightroom where you can decrease or increase the image's exposure.

However, I encourage you to try and get the best results you can using your camera.

[Adobe]