Getting the best exposure

Avoid your pictures being overexposed (too bright) with these quick tips.

If a picture is exposed for too long, there is a risk that the brightest areas will lose all detail and look unnatural. It may be hard to detect this on the image shown on your camera’s screen alone, as the brightness setting of the display can make pictures appear darker or brighter than they are in reality.

Viewing the brightness histogram alongside your pictures can help, as it provides a visual guide to the exposure of your pictures. You can display the histogram by repeatedly pressing the INFO or DISP button to cycle through the information screens during image playback.

The histogram is actually a bar graph that shows the distribution of the image's brightness levels – from dark on the left, to bright on the right. The height of the histogram at each point along the graph indicates how many pixels have recorded each brightness level. The more pixels there are towards the left, the darker the image, and the more pixels there are towards the right, the brighter the image.

If the histogram reaches a peak at the far left of the graph, your picture may be underexposed (too dark). If it peaks at the right side of the graph, your picture may be overexposed (too bright).

For an even easier visual guide, activate the Highlight alert option which you’ll find in the camera’s menu. This will make parts of the image that are potentially overexposed blink during playback, allowing you to quickly judge if those areas are important to the picture and need to be corrected with exposure compensation.

To fix exposure problems, use your camera’s Exposure compensation function. You can do this via the Quick Control screen. To make the next picture you take darker, rotate the main dial to move the indicator towards the left of the scale. To make your next shot brighter, move the indicator to the right. To reset the exposure compensation, line up the indicator with the middle of the scale. As a safety precaution, exposure compensation will be automatically reset to zero when you turn your camera off.