How to Manage Exposure Compensation with a Canon Rebel T6i DSLR Camera

The exposure compensation feature in the Canon Rebel DSLR digital cameras is awesome. I use it all the time and I have to tell you that it’s been a lifesaver in so many situations. Usually, I use it most for overblown, overexposed scenes. Either that, or for scenes where the dynamic range is simply too great and my camera isn’t making the best choices for me. A typical example would be while photographing some landscape shots. The sky is usually what gets in my way. If something bright is in the same scene as something that offers lots of shadows, there’s bound to be trouble.

Working with the exposure compensation feature inside Canon Rebel cameras is super simple. Once you do it a few times and get the hang of it, you’ll wonder how you ever managed any photography without it.

In today’s post, I’ll demonstrate the manual steps necessary to adjust exposure compensation in the Canon Rebel T6i. Really though, these instructions are good for all Canon Rebel cameras, such as the T2i, T3i, T4i, T5i and the T7i. There are only a few steps involved, so this should be a relatively quick and straightforward post.

The Program Mode (P)

To take advantage of the feature I’ll be discussing in this post, you’ll need to have your camera set to one of the manual modes. Since Program Mode is the easiest to grasp out of all of them, I’ll use that one. To enter Program Mode, I’ll turn the dial that sits on top of my camera so the P lines up with the small white line.

Once that’s done, I’ll notice that the LCD screen has a bunch of data on it. It’s some of this data that is able to be adjusted while in this mode.

If you’ll take a close look at the screenshot above, you’ll see there is a scale on the LCD screen. The scale runs from -3 to +3. This is the exposure compensation scale. It’s able to be adjusted in 1/3 stop increments.

Adjusting Exposure Compensation

To actually adjust the exposure compensation in this particular camera, all you need to do is to press and hold the exposure compensation button on the back of the camera and turn the dial that sits on the top front of the camera either to the left or to the right. Turning to the left decreases the exposure and turning to the right increases it.

In this next photo, I have the exposure compensation button circled in red. It’s the one that says Av on it.

And in this photo, I have the dial that needs to be turned left or right circled as well.

So, if I press and hold the rear button in and turn the dial to the left a few clicks, I can change the tick mark on the gauge on the LCD screen. Take a look at it now.

What’s really cool is that this same meter appears in different view modes. In the case below, the meter shows while shooting in Live View. And what’s even better than that is that as the exposure compensation is adjusted, the image on the LCD screen will get darker or lighter in real time to represent how the photo will ultimately appear after it’s been captured.

And that’s it. It’s that easy to adjust the exposure compensation on this camera. When you’re ready, you can press the shutter button to take your photo.

If you’d like to read more about exposure compensation in photography, I encourage you to read through a post I wrote a while back. It covers many different areas and I even show some example photos.

Understanding Exposure Compensation in Photography

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I hope I clearly explained how to use the exposure compensation feature in the Canon Rebel T6i DSLR camera. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!