Correct Brightness with Exposure Compensation

The camera's meter aims for an average grey, so snow comes out dull and a face against a bright sky turns into a silhouette. Exposure compensation is the fix: the plus and minus dial on a camera, or the sun-shaped slider beside the focus box on an iPhone, with similar controls on Android phones. Each full stop doubles or halves the light, and most cameras step in thirds. Watch the brightest parts. A white sky or shirt that has gone flat with no detail cannot be recovered, while slightly dark shadows usually can, so when in doubt err a little darker. Exercise: photograph something white, something black and something mid-toned, each at minus one, zero and plus one, and notice which setting looks truest for each.