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Strong/large sources of light coming from behind the main subject (such as a person indoors that is in front of a window) cause the light meter to underexpose for the main subject. This is because the light meter is programmed to average the light, and the backlight shifts the exposure calculated by the meter cause underexposure. Your eyes have the ability to rapidly adjust should you look first at the window and then the person, so you will not perceive a problem when you see a normal face. The film and meter cannot handle this variation. Cameras that provide automatic backlight compensation will increase the exposure by a predetermined amount. Check your camera manual to determine how much this will be. With other cameras, you will have to use an expousre compensation control, or manually over-ride the aperature and/or shutter speed to increase exposure.

Other ways of dealing with the situation include moving the subject away from the backlight, adding fill-in flash or photographic quality reflectors to reflect the backlight onto the front of the subject.

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14y ago
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Q: What is backlight compensation used for?
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