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Exposure bracketing
Photo enthusiasts and professionals have long relied on a technique known as exposure bracketing. Bracketing helps ensure correct exposure of a photo when lighting in a scene is difficult.
Extremes in light can trick a camera meter to improperly exposing a photo. Bracketing overrides the exposure settings.
Bracketing can be set manually on some cameras. More often that not, digital cameras can be set to bracket automatically.
When auto exposure bracketing is enabled, the camera takes two to five consecutive pictures of the same scene. The Exposure Values automatically change in plus and minus incremental steps.
Back-lighting
The first three shots were taken with the source of light coming from behind the subject. This is known as back-lighting. Without changing the Exposure Value from the default exposure reading, back-lighting causes the main subject to be under exposed, ie. dark.
Front-lighting
The next three shots were taken when the main source of light fell on the front of the subject. The strongest light came from behind the person taking the picture.
Without adjusting the Exposure Value when light falls too strong on a subject, the image becomes overexposed. What results is an photo with washed out, blown out areas.
Better to under than overexpose
It is generally better to under- rather than overexpose an photo. When editing, it is often possible to pull out detail from the darker, underexposed areas.
When portions of an image are washed out due to overexposure, there remains little or no detail to pull out in the blown-out area. In difficult lighting situations, he use of exposure bracketing usually saves the day.