Turn off the auto pilot

I shoot photos for a university. Professors teaching in classrooms with blackboards, or whiteboards, behind them.  Those large areas of black or white can wreak havoc on a camera's automatic exposure. The camera sees a lot of black and overexposes. The camera sees a lot of white and underexposes. Sure, you can use exposure compensation. Sure, camera manufacturers' automatic exposure is getting better all the time.

But here's a suggestions: Just ditch the automatic and switch to manual mode.

Arrive a few minutes early. Fire some test frames in whatever mode you typically work in. Adjust to get the subject exposure you want. Then lock that exposure down in manual mode. This works in many situations outside of classrooms ... particularly indoor shoots. Gymnasiums and stages come to mind.

Outdoor lighting can change more quickly ... I find the automatic exposure modes, aperture priority (typically my choice), shutter priority etc., paired with quick exposure compensation (add about a stop and a half of postive exposure compensation for backlighting), more helpful here.

The photo shown above is of the Dance Ensemble at the university. Auto exposure would have vastly overexposed the image. Exposure compensation would have yielded wildly inconsistent shots. It was shot with a Canon 7D in manual mode with the 50 mm 1.4 at 2.8. ISO was 3200 and the shutter speed 1/160.