+/- Exposure Compensation help please. (1 Viewer)

I'm new to digital photography. Can anyone explain what the +/- exposure compensation feature is for? I have a Canon Powershot A85 compact camera which has this feature. When shooting in manual mode, if i half press the shutter i get a number in the top left hand corner of the screen, -1 or +2 or -1/3 etc... What does this actually mean? Is it telling me the exposure is wrong and i should reset. Or does the camera in some way compensate? No technical stuff please. The manual seems a bit vague on this feature. A very simple explanation would help.
Thanks

Assuming its the same feature as on the Canon SLR's, which I'd bet it is, it allows you to under or over expose the cameras meter (add or take away light) by fractions of a stop.

For example taking a picture of a dark bird against a light sky the camera will expose more for the sky than the bird (in most cases). This results in the bird being under exposed (too dark). To overcome this simply dial in something in the region of +1 stop exposure compensation. This will allow the bird to exposed more properly.

Hope this helps

Rhod

PS Arthur Morris (wildlife photographer) explains this in his books and probably somewhere on line too. Might be worth a Google.