Level Up? Level down.

5 min readFeb 9, 2021

Taking photos using exposure compensation was an interesting experience. Why? First of all, as I adjusted the exposure, the photo became more or less blurry so I tried changing other settings, and I could see some subtle differences to make them clearer. Next, looking at the histograms as I was looking through the photos, they changed form in different ways. A few had a hump on the very right, a few on the very left, and a few in the middle and I figured this had to do with the shadows and highlights of the photographs. If the histogram hump was more to the left, there were more shadows in the image, but with it on the right, there were more highlights. If the hump appeared in the middle, the photo would have a nice balance of shadows and highlights.

Overexposed — — — Correct Exposure— — — Underexposed

I chose three photos to see the histograms in the lightroom application. The first photo called “the wave” as you see, is colorful with a balance of shadow and highlights. I thought the histogram would be more neutral and in the center, but it was spread out a lot more than I thought it would be.

Next is “shadows” photo, where I knew a lot of the histogram slump would be to the left where the shadows are. That’s true, but the tiny candle light and the highlights of the picture made the histogram hump dissolve into the middle.

Lastly, the “peel” photo I thought would have most of the histogram in the middle, but a lot of it was to the right, where the highlights of the picture are.

Now, the differences between these nine images is that each group, underexposed, correct, and overexposed are different. What I mean is you can tell that whatever 3 images you pick to see if they go in the same group is pretty difficult to determine. The colors of the images threw me off, but when I saw each of the photos histograms, I knew exactly which group each photo belonged to. When most of the hump of the histogram is in the middle, you know it is correctly exposed, but to the right is overexposed and to the left, underexposed.

What is a Histogram?

A histogram is a graph where you see the levels of highlights, shadows and colors in an image. Comparing the bright rock image to the dark lamp image, the bright rock would be on the right side of the histogram and the dark lamp would be on the left.

What is Exposure Compensation?

Exposure compensation is a way to change the settings of exposure in a camera. Even though the camera automatically adjusts to the light setting, you have the ability to change it.