Metering

TonyCooper

My Nikon allows me to choose Matrix, Center-Weighted, or Spot metering. I generally leave it on Matrix. Under what conditions should I change to either of the other two?

TonyCooper

TonyCooper wrote:

My Nikon allows me to choose Matrix, Center-Weighted, or Spot metering. I generally leave it on Matrix. Under what conditions should I change to either of the other two?

Just a "bump" on this topic. I'm really interested in some comment on this subject.

pathfinder

Tony, I shoot white lenses as you know, and matrix is called Evaluative in Canon land. Like you I use "Matrix" most of the time unless I have a specific reason not too.

I use Spot metering, especially with telephotos, when I am shooting bird portraits, backlit by the sky. Another time I might choose spot metering would be when I know what tone I want a specific portion of my image to be - say white, or black or a neutral gray. Spot metering can be helpful shooting portraits of some one standing on a snow field or a bright sandy beach. But I am usually just be lazy and use Evaluative mode and chimp a frame to set + exposure compensation instead.

I find center weighted less useful - I tend to use Evaluative or Spot only. With my histogram, I can get an exposure reading pretty quickly. I know that backlit subjects will require 1-2 stops more light than the sky, for instance. Depends on how large the subject and how large the area of sky in the frame doesn't it?

I shoot Manual mode more and more out of doors, as long as the light does not change. I prefer this to using Evaluative mode much of the time, since there is less exposure variation from frame to frame. But out of doors I am frequently shooting landscapes. For people or candids, matrix is my choice, as they are moving and change from sunlit to shade quickly.

I will be interested to hear how others make their metering choices.

Richard

TonyCooper wrote:

Just a "bump" on this topic. I'm really interested in some comment on this subject.

Tony,

If you are getting the results you want, it ain't broke, so don't fix it. I shoot Canon, not Nikon, so take this with considerable salt: If your main area of interest is brighter or darker than the rest of the frame, matrix may not give you the best results. Also, if there is wide variation in brightness, matrix will compute an average that could screw up both highlights and shadows. I generally shoot in partial (9%) metering mode, which is somewhere between spot and center-weighted average. I lock the exposure on what I want to be middle gray and then recompose the shot. It's not fool-proof--and when it misses, it can miss badly--but I have fewer exposure problems with this method than I used to when shooting matrix. Mind you, I do mainly street shooting where there is often a combination of bright light and deep shadow, so YMMV.

HTH.

TonyCooper

My reason for asking is that I recently shot some photographs in the morning on the beach in Daytona. Bright backlighting because I was facing east in the AM. I'm wondering if they would have been better if I used Spot instead of Matrix. I don't drive over to the beach very often, so I can't practice.

Also, I recently posted some shots of Indians at a Pow Wow. When shooting people studies like those, I shoot up at them in order to get sky as a background instead of a clutter.

Richard

TonyCooper wrote:

My reason for asking is that I recently shot some photographs in the morning on the beach in Daytona. Bright backlighting because I was facing east in the AM. I'm wondering if they would have been better if I used Spot instead of Matrix. I don't drive over to the beach very often, so I can't practice.

Also, I recently posted some shots of Indians at a Pow Wow. When shooting people studies like those, I shoot up at them in order to get sky as a background instead of a clutter.

Bright backlighting is a good reason not to use matrix. Spot or partial will give better results, though you may end up blowing out the sky. It all depends on what's more important to you. As for the sky as a background, you can generally just meter for the sky and set exposure manually.

wadesworld

Tony,

As others have said, the time you do want to use spot metering is a bright background. You can meter on your subject's face, then hold the AE-L/AF-L lock button to lock the exposure. Keeping that held, you can recompose the shot and shoot.

wildviper

Well, I use Spot metering about 75% of the time. There are two reasons I do this:

1. To learn
2. Go faster to finished product. Matrix always produces dull and dark pictures(that is how it works after all) for me and for what I shoot. I then have to adjust exposure in LR or Photoshop.

For me, to be able to "see" the light, color, tone that I want rendered good is more important. I don't care if I loose highlight and shadow if that is NOT important in the picture for me.

Mitchell

I also use matrix metering for most of my shooting.

I will switch to spot metering when I want to take a reading on the face in tough lighting conditions. I will generally then set the camera to manual with the spot metering settings.

Backlit soccer from last weekend. This would have been 2 stops underexposed with matrix metering.