What in the world is metering?

af_thefragile

Noob question. But i could never fully understand what metering is and how it works so can someone please help me out with understanding metering better so i can use it more creatively in my pictures...

rymus

buy "understanding exposure" by Bryan Peterson. It's the bible for newbs.

Nisio

It's how the camera works out the exposure of a picture.

Matrix metering looks at the whole of the frame and tries to work out the exposure

Spot metering just uses a spot in the middle of the frame to work out the exposure

Centre weighted is kinda in between the two.

Depending on what you're shooting you pick one. e.g. if you were shooting a dark bird in a blue sky, matrix metering would take the bright sky into account and under expose the bird, spot metering centered on the bird would expose the bird properly but the sky might be over exposed.

Edit: Just saw rymus's post there, I found that book good too

elven

The big lightbulb went on over my head when someone explained to me that the camera wants to make everything gray. Point it at a white wall, and it'll make adjustments to the settings to underexpose, to make it come out gray. Point it at a black wall, and it'll up the exposure to make it come out gray. When you think about how many different shades of gray you have in any given scene (lets pretend you're looking in black and white here for the sake of simplicity) it's up to you what to tell the camera to reproduce as gray, and then whatever is lighter than that will be lighter in the shot, and whatever is darker than that will come out darker. Bringing colour into it, green grass for example is a good mid gray so if you meter off that, your light stuff will come out light and your dark stuff will come out dark.

And, buy that book

coylemj

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metering_mode

af_thefragile

elven wrote: »

The big lightbulb went on over my head when someone explained to me that the camera wants to make everything gray. Point it at a white wall, and it'll make adjustments to the settings to underexpose, to make it come out gray. Point it at a black wall, and it'll up the exposure to make it come out gray. When you think about how many different shades of gray you have in any given scene (lets pretend you're looking in black and white here for the sake of simplicity) it's up to you what to tell the camera to reproduce as gray, and then whatever is lighter than that will be lighter in the shot, and whatever is darker than that will come out darker. Bringing colour into it, green grass for example is a good mid gray so if you meter off that, your light stuff will come out light and your dark stuff will come out dark.

And, buy that book

That was quite a good explanation i never herd before!

I tried to take the same shot with different metering modes on my camera and couldn't tell much of a difference between the shots. Maybe i should try again keeping what you said there in mind and look more closely at the changes in the picture...

I'll look into getting that book. Though i don't know if i have time to read another book right now! I'm already doing wayy too many things at once! :pac:

nilhg

af_thefragile wrote: »

That was quite a good explanation i never herd before!

I tried to take the same shot with different metering modes on my camera and couldn't tell much of a difference between the shots. Maybe i should try again keeping what you said there in mind and look more closely at the changes in the picture...

:pac:

Find a situation with a large difference in lighting in the shot (bright daylight, deep shadows) put your camera in spot metering mode, and take a shot with the center in the bright area, then do the same with the center in the dark (if you half press the shutter button the exposure will be locked, you can recompose to get the same shot), now you should see the difference.

Its worthwhile setting the image review on your camera to show the histogram overlaid, you quickly enough get a feeling for what changes you might need to make.