Hehe - what is a metering mode? Hmm...

Edit, wait, I see them... there's 3 different ones to choose from. They are kind of confusing though?

This post was edited by chantal7 on May 20 2009 07:34pm

read manual ^_^, allso i edited my last post

Yep, read it already haha.

1. Evaluative Metering

2. Partial metering

3. Center-weighted average metering

How do you know which one to use? My manual says the first one is better for portraits, the second one is for when light surrounding the subject is strong, and the 3rd is for more advanced users for back lit subjects.

i oly got finnish manual for 400d and i remember metering modes by the icon, not by english names, but that manual tell you what different metering modes mean. But one meters from whole screen, one from ceter mostly and looks some of background and one from near the focus point chosen.

This post was edited by Antichrist- on May 20 2009 07:52pm

Okay, yep, I understand that part. But which is best for most normal shots, like portraits/landscape? Lately I've been using the meters from the center.

Cant say straight ansver for that, because depends on situation, but usually for landscapes metering that measures from whole picture area is best and for portaits one that measures near focus point. Best way to find out if learn how the different metering modes read the light you see, the u learn to under or over expose it correctly if it seems that the mode ur using measures from too wide area. For example if the landscape has bright sky and normal lighted ground and using metering from whole area, you should under expose like 1/3 stop or so(depending on situation ofc) so the sky wont be over exposed so much since half is metered from the ground. Not in every situation the meter shows right if you dont want the metering to calculate from all area the metering mode gives. By testing youll learn where you need to underexpose or over expose correctly.

Okay - thanks for the help. This makes sense now. I've taken photos of landscape where the sky is nicely exposed but the ground is darker. Kind of like this photo:

you cant expose from meny points, metering mode just sets where the camera reads the light, if u read metering from grounf on that pic, and light meter show 0, sky will over expose real hard, if u read metering from sky with 0 in meter, the ground will underexpose. If u want to expose all, you need to take two(or more) shots with different exposures and combine them on photoshop to make hdr

This post was edited by Antichrist- on May 20 2009 09:49pm

Yeah - that's the crappy part. I know I've taken some photos that had this problem kind of. It helps though for wanting to take photos of people, etc.

I had taken a photo of the squirrel last summer; the squirrel was perfectly exposed while the sky in behind the trees was a little bright, but it was bokeh as well. I remember posting it somewhere and someone mentioned something about metering, but back then I didn't understand it. Now I do

or use a graduated ND filter

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

I wonder if there are cameras that would let you choose different exposures for different areas of the image.


btw welcome back Antichrist. You have been missed

This post was edited by Futurama on May 21 2009 01:23am