USE AE-LOCK
How many of you know what the ae-lock button does?
Now 50% of you goes, ae-lock button??
If I then say that the ae-lock button is the button with the * on your camera, now how many people are using it?
50%?
Okay good, this is what it does:
Here are two photos taken with the “same” setting on my camera, only difference is the ae-lock button.
Without ae-lock:
With ae-lock:
So what is it doing?
I would explain it as this, you can show the camera which part of an image you want to have the right exposure on.
So in this photos, the most important part was the face, so I told the camera that this is what I want to get right exposure on, the rest you can do what ever you want to.
I wrote an article about getting the whole photo right exposed in this article:
Getting the right exposure outside.
If you now clicked on that link, you are wondering why you shouldn’t always get the right exposure on the whole photo and not just the face.
Well in that other example, you will have to take a few test shots to get everything as you want it to be.
But if you are at a wedding for example, the bride and groom won’t wait for you to take a bunch of test photos before they slice up that cake, they will do it, and you have to get that great shot of them doing it with the first try.
So how is this done?
First off, the button we are talking about is this button, it has a star * icon it:
So what does it do?
In my example, I had my camera on AV mode, changed the Spot metering and zoomed in to my wife’s face, this was the darkest place on the whole photo, then I pressed the ae-lock button so that the camera understood that this is what we want to get the right exposure on, then composed the photo again and took the shot.
So the face now has the right exposure and everything else can get overexposed.
2 things that are good to remember is that the camera is not taking the exposure metering from where the photo is focused on!
The red dot, which says this is where I’m going to focus and doesn’t mean this is going to have the right exposure.
Second this is that many people are zooming in where they want the focus to be, then presses the shutter button halfway so that the photo keeps being in focus and then makes a new composition and takes the shots, but keeping the shutter button halfway down only means that the focus doesn’t change, if you have TV or AV mode on, all the other settings will change when you make a new composition!
it’s all about which setting you have on the camera to meter the light from.
Read this article if you aren’t familiar with this.
Here is an example what it would have look like if this would have been an important photo and I wouldn’t have used the ae-lock.
I now almost always shoot with RAW, which means I can then change the exposure about 2 steps over or under after the photo has been taken. But as you can see, to get that face back up, so that it has the right exposure, I have to go to around + 2.9 steps up, and even if it’s taken in RAW, the quality is going down, a lot….
Thanks for the tip man!
Haven’t ever really tried using the *-button..
But as of this moment, I’ll try it out, who knows, maybe it is as helpful as you say!
I’m trying to practice this and while shooting in manual mode, I compose my shot, ensure the right exposure (making sure the meter reads right in the middle), then I lock by pressing the AE lock button. However, one thing I noticed is that when I press the AE lock button, the meter changes either underexposed or overexposed. So then if I recompose, it’s reading either underexposed or overexposed. Is that supposed to happen. Is there anyway you can add pictures of how the meter should read when you lock and when you recompose?
Good tut!
Hi there Chris,
Nice to see that you’ve found this site.
I don’t have a camera on me at the moment.
But I would guess that if you are pressing the Ae-lock button in Manual mode, it shouldn’t really do anything.
The idea with the Ae-lock button is that the camera will “calculate” a new exposure for your image.
But if you have your camera on manual, then everything will be manual.
Which means that the camera won’t do anything on it’s own.
You should use the Ae-lock with AV, TV or P.
Hopefully this helped.
Ahh, now that you mention that, I do remember a guy from my local camera shop stating AE lock wouldn’t make a difference in manual mode. It also makes sense now that my brothers canon 40D doesn’t have an option for AE lock in manual mode. My camera threw me off because when I press the AE lock button I see the AE lock icon lit, so all the time I’m thinking it’s locking my exposure. Thanks for explaining.
I’ve been trying to understand how the AE lock works and happened to find this site. Thanks for the great explanation. I understand everything you said. However, I find my Nikon D80 is doing something very strange. From what I understand, the AE lock is only supposed to work in P,S,A mode, correct? It’s not supposed to work in M mode. However, when I use AE-L button in A mode, it does not lock the exposure I metered before. It does work when I use it in Manual mode. It’s so wierd. Am I doing something wrong?
Hi Kong,
Yes that should be correct, it should work with AV,TV or P on a Canon and P,S or A with a Nikon.
And that does sound strange.
With manual mode, everything should be manual, so pressing the Ae-Lock should not change anything.
It should still always be “locked” until you change some settings manually, so pressing the Ae-Lock should not change anything… or at least on my cameras, the icon doesn’t even come on with when I use Manual.
But it should work on A, as long as you are actually using A, and not Auto.
Because it will not work on Auto.
Here on support.nikontech.com it also says: Select exposure mode P, S, or A and choose center-weighted or spot metering….
So it should work with the A also.
Could you try it once more :) ?
Thanks for answering me back. I could’ve swore the AE Lock worked in Manual mode on mine. It never did in the Aperture mode. But I will try again and let you know.
Wow! Thanks for explaining!