Lighter or darker - Beaver Valley

"That camera was expensive, it takes great pictures!" Yes, it does. But what exactly does it do? Simply get away from the automatic program and get creative yourself. A light-flooded forest path could look much more beautiful individually exposed than via the automatic mode. With manual exposure compensation, we can brighten up or darken images. This is because the camera only calculates the average brightness of an average image in automatic mode. We have all had a picture of a snowy landscape that is much too dark. The snow, which is actually white, looks dark and gray - somehow wrong, because it should be much brighter and white. Or the chimney sweep, why does he look so gray, he is actually black? If we start to tell the camera whether to expose brighter (e.g. + 1.5) or darker (e.g. -1.5) in such special cases, the photos suddenly turn out the way we want them to. This does not always have to correspond to reality. We can also deliberately expose everything brighter or darker. A slightly underexposed sunset (e.g. -2) may look much more dramatic than in automatic mode (+/-0). Again, just try it out.

Even if the camera would automatically expose as on the left, it may be that we want to bring across a different light mood. The photo may look fresher if it is a bit brighter than "normal".