Our instructor photographs in a variety of genres, beginning with portraits.Working primarily in magazine photography, he is also active in a wide range of other roles, including writer, lecturer, and photo event instructor. He considers the taking of snapshots to be his life's work.
First try taking one photo. If you are not satisfied with the brightness when you view it on the picture display,
I strongly suggest giving exposure compensation a try. With exposure compensation, you can take a new photo that is lighter or darker by adding your own adjustment to the exposure decided by the camera.
Here the first photo (taken without compensation) seemed a little dark, so I tried again by shooting a brighter photo with positive compensation (+0.7).
The result was a photo that is close to what I saw with my eyes and that looks good as a finished image.
Auto bracketing is a function that allows you to automatically take three photos in succession while the camera changes a setting (exposure, white balance, color, etc.). When the exposure is changed, it is called exposure bracketing.
There are likely to be times when you are not sure how much compensation to use for exposure compensation, and times when you want to take several photos while changing the brightness level. It can be troublesome and time consuming to take one shot at a time using exposure compensation, so I suggest that you try exposure compensation bracketing. When you push the shutter release button after making the setting, the camera automatically takes three photos in succession using different brightness levels. (On some models, it is possible to specify two photos.) Later you can select the one with the brightness you like best.
When the face is dark because of backlighting or other reasons, you can also brighten it by forcing the flash to fire even when shooting in daylight outdoors. If the flash is used, only the dark face in the foreground is brightened so you get a different photo than would be produced by exposure compensation. Keep in mind that if the person is a ways away from the camera, the flash might not fully reach so the effect may be limited.