metering is everything in photography... have someone stand in front of a window... stand back so that they take up about 1/3 of the frame with 1/3 on either side... now.. try different meter modes... in short... spot meter, you will be able to see their face, zone meter they chest and face and multi or whatever other full meter will be horrid grey and nothing will exposure right... you will see details but nothing will be clean as the camera will try to meter across a range of light that is just too wide for any DSLR... film maybe... digital not yet... that is why there is HDR... where in this condition... a quick exposure of the outside will capture the details outside the window... and a slower one inside for the face will capture those details.. when put together you will have a full frame exposed correct.
there are lots of other lighting/metering things like reflected light and such... but for that you need a light meter and you don't use the meter in your camera...
one final note... select the meter mode that best fits what you are shooting...
only getting one bright spot of light on half a face in a dark room... spot meter that spot and the face will be exposed, but everything else will be black...
need a face and body and don't care about blowing the rest with the sun behind the subject, us the zone system and your subject will be exposed correctly with a cool halo of light around them...
As additional clarification, metering is where your SLR measures the amount of light coming into the camera with the aperture at the correct stop - in a digital SLR the camera will also automatically set itself to the correct shutter speed required to properly expose the thing you're pointing the camera at (this is where @icywarm's comment ties in - spot, zone metering etc tells your camera which bit of the shot you want correctly exposed).
Say for instance you're shooting with an aperture of f2.8. That's wide open, that means your camera will admit the maximum amount of light. If you have a wide open aperture, and you press your metering button, and your camera returns a shutter speed of 1/1000 or something stupidly high like that, if you don't actually require that sort of speed (i.e. you're not trying to still-capture a waterfall or something like that) you can increase your aperture a bit. Pressing the metering button again will return a lower number - your shot will still be correctly exposed, but the colours will be that bit deeper and you'll have a sharper depth of field.
Bear in mind, however, that metering is not a completely precise science - if you're not happy with the shot that comes out when you meter, don't be afraid to tweak your settings (you can do this on manual mode or P mode).
This shot was taken in a normally lighted room. Using zone or multi metering systems after 'stopping-down' you would be able to see the doctors... but since i zone metered the bright lights of the operating table the doctors are darkness... make sense?
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only getting one bright spot of light on half a face in a dark room... spot meter that spot and the face will be exposed, but everything else will be black...
need a face and body and don't care about blowing the rest with the sun behind the subject, us the zone system and your subject will be exposed correctly with a cool halo of light around them...
Say for instance you're shooting with an aperture of f2.8. That's wide open, that means your camera will admit the maximum amount of light. If you have a wide open aperture, and you press your metering button, and your camera returns a shutter speed of 1/1000 or something stupidly high like that, if you don't actually require that sort of speed (i.e. you're not trying to still-capture a waterfall or something like that) you can increase your aperture a bit. Pressing the metering button again will return a lower number - your shot will still be correctly exposed, but the colours will be that bit deeper and you'll have a sharper depth of field.
Bear in mind, however, that metering is not a completely precise science - if you're not happy with the shot that comes out when you meter, don't be afraid to tweak your settings (you can do this on manual mode or P mode).
I have an example that I just posted...
This shot was taken in a normally lighted room. Using zone or multi metering systems after 'stopping-down' you would be able to see the doctors... but since i zone metered the bright lights of the operating table the doctors are darkness... make sense?
@madmazda86, my camera spends 99% of the time on manual so shouldnt be a worry :)
thanks again!