Canon metering modes

mercphoto

The 20D manual says that partial metering is "effective when the background is much brighter than the subject due to backlighting, etc.". Would it not also apply to the opposite, when the subject is much brighter. In other words, use partial metering anytime you care about the metering at the very center only?

I'm going to be doing high school football tonight. I anticipate dark skies and I don't really care if the background is exposed properly or not. Wondering which metering mode to use: partial or center-weighted.

cmr164

mercphoto wrote:

The 20D manual says that partial metering is "effective when the background is much brighter than the subject due to backlighting, etc.". Would it not also apply to the opposite, when the subject is much brighter. In other words, use partial metering anytime you care about the metering at the very center only?

I'm going to be doing high school football tonight. I anticipate dark skies and I don't really care if the background is exposed properly or not. Wondering which metering mode to use: partial or center-weighted.

Spot

lynnesite

mercphoto wrote:

The 20D manual says that partial metering is "effective when the background is much brighter than the subject due to backlighting, etc.". Would it not also apply to the opposite, when the subject is much brighter. In other words, use partial metering anytime you care about the metering at the very center only?

I'm going to be doing high school football tonight. I anticipate dark skies and I don't really care if the background is exposed properly or not. Wondering which metering mode to use: partial or center-weighted.

For what it's worth, I shoot with partial metering 90% of the time (and that's 34K shots in the last 14 months) particularly for action. The only time I use evaluative metering is group photos.

From what I've read, the partial metering mode is the closest to true "spot metering", which isn't available in the 10/20Ds, not till the 1D and up.

I also keep my focus point to single, center; hate it when it hunts. My $.02.

Lynne

Andy

charlie -

cmr164 wrote:

Spot

he doesn't have spot available to him on a 20d.

cmr164

andy wrote:

he doesn't have spot available to him on a 20d.

Wow.

mercphoto

Metering modes

cmr164 wrote:

Wow.

And spot-metering would have been nice tonight. Markt that up as another reason to go Mark-II rather than 20D/10D/300D for sports.

I ended up going full-manual and guessing on the settings based on viewing the LCD. I went full-open on the lens at f/2.8, ISO 1600, and set shutter speeds from 1/200 - 1/320. For football that is a bit slow. Motion blur a lot of times was just a little too high. And I had to up the exposure on most shots on the computer. Really I like faster than 1/500 for football. I started trying ISO 3200 and 1/500 at the tail end. Borderline.

I think I like daylight sports better than artificial light sports.

wxwax

I've been skeered of shooting nighttime HS football here, for that very reason.

pathfinder

wxwax wrote:

I've been skeered of shooting nighttime HS football here, for that very reason.

I almost never use the green zones on the 10D or the 20D, but is this something where the sports setting might actually be better than trying to use Av or TV?
Or would it just be better to shoot in RAW to allow processing of the exposure bias later? Might allow better color balance also....

mercphoto

the results

wxwax wrote:

I've been skeered of shooting nighttime HS football here, for that very reason.

This is how it turned out:
http://mercphoto.smugmug.com/gallery/252842

cmr164

mercphoto wrote:

This is how it turned out:
http://mercphoto.smugmug.com/gallery/252842

You are right a faster shutter would have helped