About Minolta X700 exposure compensation. I got the machine and tried taking pictures at home. After taking 2 pictures, I found that the exposure compensation was at -1...

The camera's metering is generally based on five zones (18% gray). If the brightness of the photo exposed according to the metered value is the same as the brightness of the five zones, -1EV means that the metered According to zone 4, the brightness of zone 4 is one step lower than that of zone five, so the tone of the photo under -1EV exposure compensation will be one step lower in brightness than the photo under normal metering. (Question 1)

Based on your description. There are two possibilities for the buzzer to sound, one is overexposure and the other is underexposure. Furthermore, your shooting environment is a kitchen under indoor light and you are using ISO200 film, so the possibility of underexposure is relatively high. . The limit parameters of your machine cannot reach the data given by the light meter when dealing with on-site light, so the buzzer will sound. The easiest way is to increase the lighting intensity or use faster film or faster lenses. . (Question 3)

Exposure compensation is used to correctly restore the true tone of the object (key point). It’s not just about adjusting the exposure if it’s underexposed or adjusting the exposure if it’s overexposed. As mentioned before, the light meter is exposed according to the five zones. Let me expand my thinking. If I meter the light against a piece of white snow and take this photo according to the value given by the camera, then the brightness of the snow will be the brightness of the five zones, and the resulting snow will be gray. Obviously this is not true. If you adjust the exposure compensation to +2EV at this time and let the light meter meter in 7 zones, what effect will you get? You can verify it yourself. (Questions 2, 4, 5)

That’s all, I hope these are helpful to you. If you don't understand "zone", you can search for the keyword "zonal exposure method Adams". Finally, please forgive me for not being able to use more popular words to answer this question.