Exposure compensation

Rol_Lei Nut said:

Yes, but if you know what you're doing, auto + AE lock is the same as manual (usual caveats apply)....

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No, no.
The result may be the same. As far as the exposure is concerned.
But not as far as the camera, and dials that may or may not have been left in an undesired setting is concerned.

Unless you forget not to apply the 'compensation' manually when it is no longer needed (a difficult thing to do), you will never run into this problem when you use a camera in manual mode.
But in AE, there is always the chance.

AE lock sounds good, yes. If used as a one-shot compensation.
But it will not work when the thing you want properly exposed is lit below (or beyond) what your meter can deal with.
Then the only AE thing you can do is use that dial thingy.

Q.G. said:

But how did you know how much you needed to compensate .. ?

Rings a bell?

Now how, if you "compensated the exposure manually", can you "never [have] used exposure compensation"?

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Errrr... Most of my friends, er.. Cameras are actually 100% manual exposure (sorry for the shockingly politically incorrect statement).

But when I decide what "grey" is, whether I rotate a dial or use AE-lock makes no difference.

Rol_Lei Nut said:

Errrr... Most of my friends, er.. Cameras are actually 100% manual exposure (sorry for the shockingly politically incorrect statement).

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But if you "compensated the exposure manually", how can you "never [have] used exposure compensation"?

(You're thinking about the latter as a feature of automatic cameras, and not as the thing it actually does.
That's quite o.k., since as a feature of automatic cameras, it leads to problems like forgetting you have it set. That's why automatic or not matters.
But see it as one and the same, i.e. look at what it does, and you'll see that you do not need the feature, and thus also not the opportunity to forget you have it set.
That's the point i was trying to make.)

Rol_Lei Nut said:

But when I decide what "grey" is, whether I rotate a dial or use AE-lock makes no difference.

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Indeed. See my post following the one your reply was in reply to.

How do you know you need -2 stops compensation? Is that with every lens (i.e. metering coverage)?

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Because at the last event, you shot at -1 stops compensation, and the slides all came out overexposed. In my case, you only have one lens.

I use exposure compensation regularly (although not always) - when I use auto exposure.

I use auto exposure:

1) when the light is changeable;
2) when I am dealing with a rapidly changing scene; and
3) when I use OTF flash metering.

Otherwise, I meter manually, and adjust according to best judgment.

Matt