Education → Exposure Compensation

With projection photography, the studio is usually very dark. When shooting in aperture priority (or other automatic modes), your camera will likely misinterpret the dark studio an over-expose the resulting images. To avoid blown out highlights, use exposure compensation to pull the exposure down a stop or two.

The exact steps vary from camera-to-camera, but the concept is the same.

Note: If you shoot in manual mode, which is what I recommend, you can ignore all of this.

Canon

This is what exposure compensation (-1 stop) looks like on the back of an EOS R camera:

Hold the shutter button halfway down, then use the largest circular dial on top of the camera to move the compensation up and down. You should also be able to adjust exposure compensation using the touchscreen.

Nikon

Press and hold the Exposure Compensation button while rotating the command dial until the desired value is selected in the viewfinder or information display.

Sony

This is the top of a Sony A7iii. It has a dedicated exposure compensation dial (lower-right), so all you need to do is turn it: