Exposure value compensation is a fast way to change the brightness of the picture when the metering of the camera gets the brightness wrong. This usually happens when you’re shooting a subject in shadow while the rest of the scene is very brightly lit.

For DSLR with many points of metering, focusing & bracketing, this is less of an issue. But, for the Lumia 1020, the metering seems to be full frame average, so the possibility of overexposure + underexposure is very high.

So if a photo turns out too bright or dark on Full Auto, change the EV in -0.3 or +0.3 steps respectively. With some experience you should be able to gauge the amount of EV compensation to use.

Another interesting point to note is when you use Full Manual mode & adjust both the ISO & Shutter Speed, the EV counter will change to correspond to the average brightness of the scene. If you select a fast shutter speed & low ISO, the scene may be underexposed & the EV will show -3.0 to 0.0. Adjust either parameters to get it closer to 0.0.

Conversely if the shutter speed is too slow or ISO too high, the EV will show +3.0 to 0.0. Just reduce ISO to lowest, then increase shutter speed as necessary.

Always prioritise shutter speed when shooting moving subjects & prioritise low ISO for static subject unless the shutter speed goes higher than 0.5s.

Unfortunately, switching the Flash modes doesn’t change the EV unlike most digicam & DSLR. It’ll be good if Nokia can do the necessary math to reflect the Flash mode’s effect on the EV counter. It’ll take a lot of the guesswork out of shooting and probably gives a much better picture when the image processor is aware of how the Flash should affect other settings like shutter speed, WB, etc.

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