meter questions...

hi guys, need some help. new to the dslr and i have a couple of questions regarding the different types of meter...

such as evaluative, spot, partial, and center weighted average metering....

uhhh when should i switch to a different meter? for what type of pictures so i be changing the meter to? i'm guessing that the evaluative is just an average or for a basic shot.

but what are the others for?

This should be explained in your camera manual. Canon have never documented how their evaluative system works but here's the Nikon answer:

The default metering mode (Evaluative in your case) is the camera manufactures best shot at analysing the scene and trying to come up with the correct exposure. In the case of the D300 it compares 1005 points from the scene (in colour) with a database of 30,000 typical scenes. It takes into account the focussing distance, if the camera is horizontal or vertical, possibility of flash off a mirror in the background, etc. All this is in realtime, for each image, between you pressing the release and the shot being fired. It works very well.

If you think you can do better than that - the camera provides other modes. you select the area of the scene which the camera assumes is an 18% reflectance mid-tone:

Spot = you choose a very small area (5-8% of the image) and the camera ignores the rest. This would be useful if you had your subject against a very dark or very light background (white cat in a coal cellar, subject in contrejour, person on a snowfield, at the beach, etc.).

Center-weighted = The camera takes the average of a vaguely triangular zone in the center of the frame. The lower part (ground) has more importance than the upper part (sky) - which is fine as long as the camera isn't vertical. This was the default mode 20 years ago and I guess that some people still prefer it

Personally I leave the camera on the default mode almost all the time, shoot RAW and sort out minor inaccuracies on the computer (plus or minus 2 stops exposure correction in NX2)

thanks for the information.

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Originally Posted by arcticreaver

hi guys, need some help. new to the dslr and i have a couple of questions regarding the different types of meter...

such as evaluative, spot, partial, and center weighted average metering....

uhhh when should i switch to a different meter? for what type of pictures so i be changing the meter to? i'm guessing that the evaluative is just an average or for a basic shot.

but what are the others for?

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Its more that centre weighted average is for average or basic shots.

Evaluative is more sophisticated as it can recognise potential problems such as back lighting and adjsut accordingly.

Partial is only a part of the screen, spot is a smaller part of the screen than partial. Some of Canon's more sophisticated cameras have multi-spot metering where you can meter sevaral key parts of the image and get the best exposure for all them.

The classic uses for spot /partial are:
1 a spot lit actor / musician against a dark background. Whole screen metering might be fooled by the black background and over expose

2 heavily back lit subject where average might well result in under exposure

Generally put the camera on evaluative and let it do the work! But don't forget to use the histogram and check the image after shooting!