I just read on the short tutorial. Exposure compensation basically means adjusting the shutter/aperture accordingly? But what if my camera reached the lowest limit? And for normal indoor pictures to reduce camera shake, lowering exposure = lowering shutter speed right? As in its the same settings that the camera will apply if I were to do it myself?
it is a little long to explain. you may need to read up more and shouldn't be too difficult.
light input & data conversion = data collection and storage
A x B x C x D = E
A=frame intensity
B=aperture size
C=shutter duration
D=ISO
E=exposure.
you can alter the eventual exposure you want for the picture, say maybe 9 exposure values for night scene and 14 exposure values for day scene. the camera will intelligently help to suggest an exposure E for you, but you might want to adjust to your taste, by exposure compensation to E. note exposure compensation is a separate function that alters E. metering mode and external grey card calibrations are other function that alters E.
Once the E is set, A to D will be set by you depending on which items you chose to manually control, the rest of A to D will be set by the camera - hence it is semi-automatic. if you set E but let the camera decides B to D, it is considered full-automatic where you only control the scene modes and the framing A.
Note the workflow here is reverse. we start with E and then the camera works backwards.
E with any adjustment = A x B x C x D with variable semi-automation or full automation.
manual mode basically means the camera will not set the E for you. whatever you enter for A to D, will give you E to whichever values the equation gives. however, the system will still tell you how far your E is away from the calculated value, and you can tune A to D till it reaches the satisfactory E you want.
in manual mode, it works the normal way we understand the equation. it is done by trial and error or some old rules depending on lighting.
A x B x C x D = E