Now when I take the shot, my subject is properly exposed and the background is slightly overexposed.
But in some scenarios, you’ll have to more drastically adjust the exposure compensation. For example, let’s say I’m shooting a crow up in a tree on an overcast day. The dark crow is in front of some bright clouds. When I review my first shot, I notice the crow is just a black silhouette against some properly exposed clouds. This is because the camera was a little confused and exposed for the clouds instead of the crow. Since I want to be able to see the details of the crow, I bump my exposure compensation up a couple stops to +2. Now when I take the shot, my subject is properly exposed and the background is slightly overexposed.