How to Get a Correct Exposure

Anyone who's been doing photography for a while probably knows how to nail the exposure on their pictures most of the time. That being said, there are still some difficult situations and some tips for getting a great exposure in camera that it doesn't hurt going over again.

This assumes a basic understanding of stops, camera controls and other basics. If you need refreshers or are just starting photography, you might want to check out this page.

Understand how the camera meter works.
Your camera meter wants to expose the scene for 18% gray. Keep this in mind, because you need to...

Adjust exposure for bright or dark scenes.
Imagine that you're taking pictures of bright, white snow. You aim your camera at the snow to get a reading, adjust your settings for proper exposure, and click away. But all your pictures come out a muddy gray! Remember, the camera meter wants to expose the scene for 18% gray. This means it will underexpose anything that is brighter than 18% gray. So what do you do? Increase the exposure a stop or two, until you get nice, white snow.

The opposite is true for dark scenes - the camera will overexpose them to bring them up to 18% gray. So underexpose them until they look in camera to how you see them with your eye.

Overexpose bright scenes, underexpose dark ones. This might seem counterintuitive at first, but think about it for a bit. It'll make sense.

Check your metering mode.
If you aren't familiar with the different types of metering modes in your camera, check out your camera manual. Usually, the different modes meter from different parts of the viewfinder, so that you can choose which parts of the scene you want to exposure "properly".

Since I usually do portraits, I usually leave my camera in center-weighted metering. If my camera had spot metering, I'd use that so that I could meter off the face.

Use your histograms.
Check your camera manual to figure out how to enable histograms. It doesn't matter which type of histogram you use (luminosity or RGB), just that you take a look at them when you're trying to nail down exposure. Especially watch out for clipped highlights and shadows. If you don't know what a histogram is, check out this article for an overview of them. They're not hard to understand, and they are very, very useful.

Watch for blown highlights.
Most cameras have a feature that shows black blinking over overexposed highlights. If you see white blinking with black, you wont' be able to recover any detail in those areas - so you usually want to decrease your exposure a stop or two until you stop seeing those blinking areas.

Do not try to judge exposure by eye.
You will have problems. The little LCD on the back of your camera isn't really big enough to accurately check focus without zooming in, and it definitely isn't accurate enough to check your exposure. The histogram is a much more reliable method.

Shoot in RAW!
It's been said time and time again, but shoot in RAW! This not only gives you control over your photographs as far as contrast, white balance, and so on goes, but also allows you to adjust exposure (to an extent) after the fact. I rarely get spot on exposure the first time around, and I usually end up adjusting the exposure a little after the fact. No one can nail exposure every time.

So that's about it from me as far as getting proper exposure goes. If you have any other tips drop a line in the comments below.