The tools or func­tions listed below may or may not be on your cam­era. Check your camera’s man­ual to see if they are avail­able.  If so, these tools can help you achieve bet­ter expo­sures even in default light­ing situations.

RAW File Format

If avail­able this is prob­a­bly your first defense in bet­ter expo­sure but, it may require spe­cial soft­ware. Shoot in the RAW file for­mat if pos­si­ble.  RAW files have all the  infor­ma­tion and will even have more detail in the shad­ows and high­lights that are lost in the JPG file for­mat. JPG files from your cam­era dis­cards a lot of use­ful infor­ma­tion that can help in post pro­cess­ing. This may save an oth­er­wise  bad exposure.

Cam­era Histogram

Use the his­togram on your cam­era and try to keep the graph some­where in between ether side of the his­togram box. This will give you the best expo­sure pos­si­ble. If the graph goes beyond the right or left it will be over or under exposed. This is called clip­ping. Just note that if you have really bright or dark spots in your pho­to­graph you may not be able to remove all the clipping.

Exam­ples below of  his­tograms with under exposed, prop­erly exposed  and over exposed photo

This is an exam­ple of an under exposed photo. Notice the graph is run­ning past the left side of the his­togram. This is clip­ping on the left.  Remem­ber all the infor­ma­tion that is past the left or clipped is lost and will show up as pure black on your photo.

This is an exam­ple of a prop­erly exposed photo. Notice the graph is cen­tered and to the left side of the his­togram. There is a small amount of clip­ping on the right. This is nor­mal because there are some bright white spots in the photo.

This is an exam­ple of an over exposed photo. Notice the graph is run­ning past the right side of the his­togram. This is clip­ping on the right. Remem­ber all the infor­ma­tion that is past the right or clipped is lost and will show up as pure white on your photo.

Please note I have used Light­room his­tograms in these exam­ples. The his­togram on your cam­era may look dif­fer­ent but will basi­cally work the same.

High­lights or Blinkies

High­light point dis­play or the “blinkies”. This is a mode where the dis­play on the back of the cam­era will blink in bright spots on the dis­play or photo. This works sim­i­lar to the his­togram. as the blink­ing shows the clip­ping only on the over­ex­posed por­tion of the dis­play or photo. This can be an easy way to check expo­sure. Just a note -  some blink­ing may be ok in areas of your photo such as clouds, the sun or very bright spots.

Expo­sure Compensation

Con­sider using the expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion func­tion in Aperture-Priority or Shutter-Priority. Use this func­tion if your his­togram is clip­ping. In man­ual mode this can be done by adjust­ing the aper­ture or shut­ter so that you com­pen­sate by over or under expos­ing as needed to get the his­togram to not clip as much as pos­si­ble. This is really handy in default light­ing sit­u­a­tions like bright sunny days or in win­ter with snow and sun.

Expo­sure Bracketing

One more option to con­sider is the expo­sure brack­et­ing func­tion. In this func­tion you will take 2 or 3 frames or more (I set mine to 3 frames and +/- 5EV in incre­ments 1/2) . 1  would be prop­erly exposed, 1 over exposed and 1 under exposed. Then in your photo edit­ing pro­gram pick the one with the best exposure.

Expo­sure brack­et­ing can also be used in HDR or High Dynamic-Range pho­tog­ra­phy and the pro­gram I use, Pho­tomatix Pro 3.1,  It is a stand­alone pro­gram and also has plug-ins for Adobe Pho­to­shop CS5 and Adobe Pho­to­shop Light­room 4.  In HDR you shot mul­ti­ple  pho­tos all at dif­fer­ent expo­sures. Then using a pro­gram in post pro­cess­ing to com­bin­ing them into one pho­to­graph that uses the best exposed por­tion of each photo shot.  Real Cool!  I will cover this more in detail in a future article.

Soft­ware

The post pro­cess­ing soft­ware avail­able today can do a lot to repair a badly exposed photo, but it can­not repair or bring back infor­ma­tion that is lost by clipping.

This is the soft­ware I use in the order that I use them the most.

Adobe Pho­to­shop Light­room 4

Pho­tomatix Pro

Topaz labs Adjust

Adobe Pho­to­shop CS5