Light metering

[Ellekes]

Another silly question probably.

I've read up on light metering and setting the right setting etc...
But I'm still not sure how exactly to meter the actual lighting.

What I would do is point the red square in the viewfinder over the area I want metered , press the shutterbutton halfway down and then rearrange composition. Does that do the trick?

Is there a way to measure once and then save the settings?

Thanks

BTW, I use a Canon EOS 1000

[Rob_Ashton]

Hi Vicky,

I'm assuming your talking about metering for a scene here. When your looking through your viewfinder, at the bottom of the finder there is a load of info about iso, shutter speed, aperture etc... on that bar you will see something like this:

[-2..-1..^..1..2]

That will have a flashing bar on it that will move up and down in different lighting conditions, you dont have to half press the shutter button to take a reading, it will do it all the time. What that bar is telling you is how under exposed, or over exposed your scene will be, you need to alter your settings so that the flashing bar is on the center ^

It will of course effect your final exposure settings depending on what metering mode your using and what effect your after, but as a general rule - thats what your looking for :)

(I have been talking manual up to now just so you know)

There is a way to measure once and save, its called exposure lock, point the camera to where you want to meter from, press the button with the * on it and that will lock the exposure setting until you take the shot. This is useful when using aperture or shutter priority, or even auto I guess, when the camera is metering for you. Obviously not much use when using manual since only you are going to be changing the settings :)

hope that makes sense,

Rob.

[Jim.R]

Of course, how the camera meters the scene will depend on which metering mode you're using. These are explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metering_mode

[GrittyShaker]

Worth noting that the 1000D doesn't have spot-metering, so don't read too much into that bit!