metering modes

Messages
401
Name
Bruno
Edit My Images
Yes
I am a kind of confused when it comes to select a metering mode (centered, evaluative, partial, spot metering). What mode do I select for what situation ? can someone enlighten me please
Thank you
 
can someone enlighten me please

good choice of words:lol:

I know that centre weighted takes an average reading from a fairly broad spot in the centre of the frame and it's probably the most commonly used setting and fairly accurate.

spot metering takes a reading from the centre spot and it's a very fine point and very sensitive, If, say you wanted to expose the shot to get the sky detail and weren't bothered about the shadows on the ground for example, you would point the centre spot at the sky and press focus-lock (usually a * button). This would lock the exposure settings and you could then recompose the shot how you wanted and then depress shutter and the sky would be nicely exposed with all detail in the clouds etc etc. It's a very fine tool for selecting exactly what you want exposing. The hard bit is getting a good balance of exposure across the scene while pushing it towards the chosen subject

I'm not sure about the other one :)
 
At the stage you're obviously at, it wouldn't mean too much to you to do an in depth explanation of each metering mode.

Evaluative Metering is the one to use for most subjects. This system takes separate exposure readings from numerous little areas on your image and then onboard software computes the correct exposure, after first consulting thousands of stored sample images to try to find a similar image. It sounds fantastic and it mostly is, although the system can be fooled sometimes.
 
This video explains it well. Its explaining the 40D, so 50D would be the same.
[YOUTUBE]
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/E2qnIfJnuAU&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/E2qnIfJnuAU&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>[/YOUTUBE]
 
Great, thank you
 
I am a kind of confused when it comes to select a metering mode (centered, evaluative, partial, spot metering). What mode do I select for what situation ? can someone enlighten me please
Thank you

stay on spot all the time...then you do the evaluating and are in control
 
most of my gig shots are on spot.
makes you more concentrated on what your shooting.
light differs so much across a shot, that i can keep to a face, a guitar or something important to the shot.

if your shooting a subject with strong backlight, spot works wll too.
you can meter of the subject, and not worry about the strong light being metered for, ending up with a silhoette.
 
Back
Top