General

Many exposure problems can be remedied only if you have full control over the exposure in your camera. There are fewer options if you have a simple compact camera. Remember - the camera will get it right most of the time. If your camera is getting it right, then don't do anything differently. However, understanding the problems might help you prevent the camera from getting it wrong.

Problems do vary according to the type of film you use. Negative film has much more 'latitude' or tolerance to under- or over-exposure than colour transparency film (and most such problems can be eliminated or reduced when the negative is printed). However, it is less able to cope with high contrast and a range of tones (unless you are able to print your own negatives of course, when the full range can be brought out on to the paper). If you use negatives then much of this advice will not be needed.

Solutions to exposure problems require experiment for your camera and your taste. 'Bracket' your exposures (repeat the picture several times using different settings) and make a note of what you did. Then select the best results and use that setting in a similar situation next time.

Don't ignore the advice inside the film box. It is based on a fundamental principle that in bright light, the film with the camera aperture set at f/16 will respond best at a shutter speed reciprocal to the film speed - ie on a bright sunny day, ¹/₁₀₀th second at f/16 will give a good result on 100 speed film.

On the Beach

The main problem here is the abundance of water and sand. Why a problem ? Well the meter in your camera is not as clever as your brain when it comes to interpreting the amount of light reflecting from objects around it. The good news is that negative film is much less affected than transparency film. Here's the techie stuff!

The majority of surfaces other than the particularly dark and very pale reflect back about 18% of the light they receive. Therefore, most camera meters are programmed to treat a 'normal' object as reflecting 18% of the light. They run into difficulty when an object reflects more or less than this.

Point a normal light meter at a black wall and it will think "Hey, too little light here! I'd better give more exposure to light to make it appear 'normal'" - result: a mid-grey (18% in fact) coloured wall on the photo. Point a normal light meter at a white wall and it will think "Hey, too much light here! I'd better give less exposure to light to make it appear 'normal'" - result: exactly the same -a mid-grey coloured wall on the photo.

Water, sand and swimming pool tiles reflect more light than 18% (except black volcanic sand!). Caucasian skin tones reflect around 18% unless very deeply tanned or sickly pale. Therefore, in very bright conditions on the beach, if you have sand or sea in the shot the camera will automatically react as in the white wall situation above - give less exposure to the film thinking there is too much light - result: skin tones are too dark or heavily shadowed.

Solutions:

• Try metering directly from your subject; i.e. go in close or use a spotmeter on the person's face, or take a meter reading from the back of your hand. Set the exposure accordingly for your camera (see your manual for details). Note :- very pale skin may need slightly more exposure to record it accurately and very dark skin slightly less.

• For general beach scenes with very bright sand, try over-exposing by one f-stop (+1 or x2). You might try using the 'backlight' feature on your compact if you cannot make this adjustment. This will give rich sand tones and keep the blue skies. For accurate skin tones in a protrait, you might need two f-stops extra (+2 or x4) but that might wash out the sand too much in a landscape.

• Metering the amount of light falling on the camera (as opposed to the subject) using an 'incident light' meter removes the problem.

• For subjects in the sea, a polarising filter may cut down the light reflected from the water to around 18% of incident levels, or to even less than this!

• Enjoy producing pictures showing more tan than really existed.

Into the Light

With shots taken into the light, a similar problem occurs as above - the camera thinks the subject is the bright sunlight and makes its normal adjustments, under exposing your real subject. If your subject is a dramatic landscape with strong light, then go with it. Otherwise:

Solutions:

• Meter from the subject as described in Problem 1. Here's where you would use the 'backlight' feature on the compact.

• Use a flash gun to 'fill-in' some light. This is often a better option if carefully balanced as it leaves the main lighting unaltered and natural.

Unsightly Shadows

Strong lighting on the human body often leaves shadows, which would add greatly to a landscape but can be unsightly in a portrait. (If you are intending nude studies, then of course the emphasis on cracks and crevices, hollows and folds, can be exactly what you are after, in which case, invert the "solutions"!)

Solutions:

• Use a white T-shirt or cloth or, better, a reflector to 'fill-in' some light into the shadows. You can get an assistant to help you do this and you will see the changes with your eyes as the reflector is adjusted to where you want it. Sand itself is a good natural reflector - try standing the subject by a carefully-chosen dune. You could also use a white windbreak but not a coloured one unless you want your subject to look like something out of The Rocky Horror Show.

• You may choose not to make close portraits in strong light for this very reason. When the light is strong and contrasty, try the landscape approach. Revert to portraits when you have softer, more diffused lighting without the harsh shadows. The hour after sunrise is often called "The Golden Hour" because of the soft nature of the sunlight at that time.

In the Forest

Again in strong light, leaves and grass tend to reflect light back. These can cause the picture to look washed out. Also, patches of bright sunlight filtering through the trees can easily over-expose unless you meter for them. And don't forget that the eye compensates for the colour of light, and won't pick up the fact that the light reflected from a grassy meadow is rather green - your subject could appear to be wearing green stockings!

Solutions:

• Use a polarising filter to remove the reflections.

• Make sure you meter for the highlights with slide film and the shadows with negative film. Then have your best negative hand-printed because the high-street lab will not get it right.

• You may choose not to take forest pictures in strong light for this very reason. Return when you have softer, more diffused lighting without the bright highlights.

Indoors

Flash photographs are often unflattering. It is not only the well-known "red-eye" effect, and in any case many flash systems now use anti-red-eye systems. The problem is that the flash exposure will be determined by the amount of light returned by the subject. If the subject is some naked bodies, then in many cases the result is badly over-exposed (ie pale or completely white) bodies against a dim or near-black background. The discrepancy in these situations arises because the background is much further away than the bodies. An inverse square law applies, so that a background twice as far away receives only a quarter as much light. An off-camera flash is almost always better than a built-in one (except in terms of convenience), and is usually better than a separate flash mounted on the hot-shoe. The best sort of add-on flash unit (whether used on-camera or off-camera) has a main unit which can be swivelled and tilted, with a smaller fixed unit for fill-in. Even a good off-camera flashgun needs to be used intelligently to avoid the same washed-out result as a built-in flash.

Solutions:

• Use "bounce flash" if possible. By directing the flash head at the ceiling (assuming it is not the roof of a sports hall several metres high!) the illumination will be much more even. Since the light path is indirect, there is no red-eye either. Note that bounce flash needs to be a lot more powerful than direct flash, other things being equal. Bounce flash may also produce much more natural modelling of your subjects - as per Problem 3, the hard shadows of direct flash are usually unflattering. (Beware of coloured ceilings!)

• Use diffuse flash. Even such a simple measure as draping a tissue over the flash tube (taking care not to obscure the sensor) can achieve a much less harsh result. Some flashguns come with clip-on diffusers. The improvement results because direct illumination is reduced while indirect illumination (ie "bounced") is increased. As with fully-bounced flash, diffuse flash needs to be more powerful than direct flash.

• Use a slave flash, triggered from the main unit, to illuminate the general area. Most camera shops have second-hand areas, and fairly powerful flashguns can often be picked up cheaply - look for one with a tripod bush as this will make it much easier to set it up as a slave unit.

Photographs indoors without flash often produce disappointing results. If using natural light from windows, the contrast between sunlit and shaded areas is usually far too extreme. If using artificial light, colours look wrong - photographic emulsion can't compensate for reddish incandescent light or greenish flourescent light the way the eye/brain system does - although many digital cameras have systems which provide such an adjustment ("white balance" - remember to reset it when you go back outside or revert to flash).

Solutions:

• Use fill-in flash with artifical lighting. Although fill-in flash won't help the colour of the background, it can restore the natural colour of your main subjects.

• Use special film or add a filter with artificial lighting. It is possible to buy film which is designed for exposure in artificial light. This "Tungsten" film is intended for use with high-wattage Photoflood or similar photographic lights, but will still give much better results than "Daylight" film with ordinary incandescent lighting. Tungsten film will give worse results than Daylight film in flourescent lighting conditions. Colour-correction filters are available to rebalance Daylight film for use in either incandescent or flourescent light. Don't forget that flourescent lighting is no longer confined to long "striplights" - "low energy" lights are also flourescent.

• Take care with direct sunlight indoors. Either avoid the extreme contrast between full sun and indoor shade completely, for example by keeping to north-facing windows/doors, or use a diffuse reflector to throw more daylight into the shaded background (see Problem 3 for suggestions of things to use as reflectors). Sometimes, pale flooring and/or pale walls can do this for you. Make sure that the reflectors are out of shot.

• If you are using negative (print) film in a situation of very high contrast, and can make your own prints, remember that most negative film will actually register a much greater contrast range than can be reproduced on the print. As noted above, negative film has a substantial "latitude". By dodging, masking and burning-in while exposing the print, details of both subject and background can be given appropriate levels.