Digital camera metering modes help you get better pictures
Digital camera metering modes are there to help you get properly exposed photos but do you know how and when to use them?
To help you understand which one to pick let's look at an example of where the camera got it wrong. Imagine you are at the seaside and the sun is shining. You turn your head and see your child waving at you as he climbs up the cliff. The cliff is in shadow but your eye adjusts and you can see him clearly. Great photo you think to yourself, so you zoom in and press the shutter button.
But oh dear! Looking at the LCD screen you can see that the whole picture is much too light. How did that happen? The camera "looked" at the whole scene and then averaged it out to a middle grey tone which has resulted in this wishy-washy, grey, cliff scene.
So can we trick the camera into doing a better job? Yes! Most probably the camera was using its multi-zone (or ESP, pattern or matrix - different manufacturers call it different names) metering mode. Most cameras however have other options we could choose.
If we had changed to center weighted metering the camera would have only used the information in the center of the frame to work out its exposure. If your child occupied most of that area and was wearing mid-toned clothes we may have got a better picture.
This is still leaving a lot to chance, however, and we may want more precision. There is another digital camera metering mode we can try.
Spot metering mode
Spot metering mode uses a tiny area of the frame, which we can choose, to give us pinpoint accuracy. So after changing the mode we frame up the shot again, this time pointing the center of the camera to an area that we want to be a middle toned shade in our photo. Maybe the child's shorts?
But you after reading the page on composition you know that placing the child dead centre of the frame will result in a boring photo. Not a problem. After picking your spot to meter from, just push the camera shutter half way down, then reframe the picture before taking the shot. This way you can lock the exposure that you want but also get the picture you want.
Ah that's much better!
Now let's use a real life example of how spot metering mode can help us in another situation. This time we want to take a close up picture of white flowers, in the garden. Again we will start with the multi-zone setting. But in the resulting picture the flowers are "blown out" or in other words there is no shading visible just a blank white mess of highlights. Due to the dark background the camera averaged out the scene and the small area of white was overexposed, as you can see from the enlarged area, below.
Now let's try spot metering from the shaded side of the flower. Not quite as easy as it sounds as the flower kept moving in the breeze! (Click here for more info on photographing flowers) As you can see from the picture below we managed to achieve more detail in the petals using this digital camera metering mode.
The same principles apply to a scene where the background is bright and the subject darker. By spot metering on a mid-toned area of the subject you will give the camera a hint as to which area you want to appear middle grey and thereby achieve a perfectly exposed photograph. (Click here for more help on understanding exposure).
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