This weeks challenge is using your camera’s internal meter……
I have been asked to put this challenge up on behalf of last week winner: Cassandra @ozziehoffy
What they hell is he talking about I hear you say!!!
Have you ever wondered why when you take a photo in a room what has a bright window in it, the image is under exposed? Or if you take a photos of a wedding/white dress the dress is dark???
The answer is your in camera meter…
Mmmmm I still don’t understand….
In short.
When you take a photo, you camera performs some crazy calculation from focus, to light to distance, to speed, etc. One of these calculations is how bright of dark the image is and depending on that calculation it changes the setting in your camera so you can get a correctly exposed image. While this works most of the time it has issues, and if falls short in the two examples I have mentioned.
Let me walk you through the process using those two examples:
In room with a bright window in the background. The image comes out underexposed. Why? When you point your camera at the subject you camera looks around with its very camera looking eyes, and see an image. It then does a calculation as to e average amount of light that is contained within the entire image. If there wasn’t a bright window then you could say that the image would be even in exposure, so you camera sets the camera up and you have no problems. Now if there is a super bright spot in the image and this bright spot is bright enough to bring up the average brightness of the image, the camera thinks that it is a bright image so it changes its settings to reduce that brightness and you’re the entire image becomes underexposed.
The same is true for a bride in a white dress. The camera will look at the image and will reduce the overall exposure so the average image brightness is exposed. i.e. Turning the white dress grey.
NOTE: To keep things simple I use not disclosed the exact way and why the camera does this but if you do want to know the more technical side do a Google search on 18% grey and camera exposure.
The challenge for us is how do we judge this and in discussion with Cassandra @ozziehoffy we decided that even though it might be hard to judge it is a very valuable lesson and we should give it a try.
So here is what I am suggesting to help us judge.
Your challenge is to put yourself into a situation where you have competing lighting condition and use your internal meter to take at least 2 photos using the different settings then either post both of them up as 2 uploads or put them in one picture.
For more information on your camera meter have a read of this post:
You might also have to dig through your manual to find out how you change your meter reading.
As a tip I would try: Spot meter and centre weight metering.
Experienced photographers who are knowledgeable in this particular setting are encouraged to offer “kind and constructive” suggestions on the posted entries. Those entering this challenge want to learn and improve.
This challenge starts today January 25th and last through February 4th. All photos must be taken during these dates to be considered. Enter as many as you would like- the idea is to practice & learn.
TAG YOUR PHOTO CSC-20 AND post your picture in this thread to receive feedback from other experienced photographers specific to this challenge.
Voting will take place February 5 (and remain open about 24 hours) and the winner will be announced February 6th. The winner of the challenge will select an experienced photographer to host a new challenge . It is the winner’s option on who they want to host the next challenge; it may be someone they follow whose work they admire, or someone who is active offering suggestions on previous CSC challenges. The winner may also select an experienced photographer for the list of photographers who have agreed to host future challenges as another option or host the challenge themselves if they would like. Here is the link to that list: http://365project.org/myhrhelper/365/2011-12-12
Expect to receive constructive suggests on how to improve your skills.
How to post your photo on this link:
1) Go to your page that has the photo you wish to post.
2) Copy the “share” code in the bottom right section of that page.
aha! i keep meaning to learn this aspect of my camera but i have never been able to "get around to it"... thank you kindly for setting this challenge... may i ask a question?
for a long time now i have played with the AF points - which i think (hope) determines what will be in focus... and i've noted that if i use a single AF point and focus on something dark, then, when in aperture priority mode, the shutter speed will be slower, while if i'm shooting the same scene, but focussing on a lighter point, the shutter speed will be faster... so i am not clear how or even whether this relates to the metering...
@ozziehoffy yep... i really desperately need to learn this one... up until now, every time someone says the word "metering" i metaphorically stick my fingers in my ears and sing "la la la la la la... not listening!!!!" ;p
@northy I think (but do not know and want to learn) that if you're using spot metering and single point focus, your camera will expose for your focal point. I tend to shoot that way, hopefully I'm not completely wrong!
@rockinrobyn well i just checked my settings and my camera is set for evaluative metering... i've never played with that setting at all... so will need to find a suitable subject and run some test shots using the various combos of options to see what i end up with...
@agima Yeah!!! Thank you so much for this challenge! I have been wondering what metering is and how to do it so I am excited to learn this too. @northy You crack me up - I think I've also metaphorically stuck my fingers in my ears and sang lalala..not listening!
@northy if you are using one focus point do an experiment like this. Set up a shot with light and dark areas in it. Focus on a bright section of the shot and hit fire then do the same but focus on a darker section and hit fire. You will see a big change in exposure as you focus point is used for metrring. What I usualy do in real life is focus on an area of average light in the shot, keep the focus button held down slightly, recompose the shot and hit fire. Need to keep the fire button semi held down while you recompose though. Hope that makes sense.
@brav tx!!! this makes perfect sense... and yes, i think that's the effect i've noticed... i mostly do this for street shots, if i'm waiting for some poor soul to walk thru the frame... 'cept it gets tricky because if i put the dot over something too far away, half click and recompose, there's a good chance my unsuspecting subject (when he or she turns up) will not be in focus...
but yes... what you said... i often do this to test out what shutterspeed to set if i want to shoot manual... altho' i'm sure there's a much better way to go about it ;p
@northy You are along the right path. Your metering is attached to your center focal point if you are using spot metering (i.e. meter usign the focus point that I am using), if you are using the other types then it is from the center of the image.
So chances you have spot metering on but this may not be the case if you are using the center focal point.
Let me expand on this a little....
As alrady mentioned when you half press your shutter it will lock the focus in for that point, it will also lock in the exposure for that point, so if you reposition then it will stay exposted to the orginal locked focal point.
Now having said that some cameras have the ability to lock the exposure without locking the focus. This allows you to point to a spot and expose against that, then reposition and set your focus.
@agima tx for the offer Brendan... I'd really like to try that kind of virtual chat thing one day... But right now, It's getting on for my bedtime here and what I really think I need to do is try it out and experiment a bit... After which I might have some somewhat intelligent questions rather than pretending like I'd never heard the term metering before;)
Ok Second time trying a camera setting challenge.My camera has 4 settings Evaluative,Partial,Spot and center-weighted. You want me to find something bright and dark in the same photo.Then using two of these settings take 2 photos.Doing my best to make them both turn out.Does it have to be in AF or can you use MF? And you want them SOOC goes without saying.
@wildernesswillie I guess the real point is that you lean how these setting effect your images, so if you want to use manual focus go for it... I very rearly use manual focus.
SOOC if you like, or processed if you like, as long as you don't touch up the exposure as this is what this is all about. ;-)
This will be a bit of a challenge to find something that will work. The best way to try it would be to have someone standing with their back to the sun and take their photo, then change setting and take the photo again. You might have to play with distance and how much light comes in but hey thats where you learn stuff..
For the record, I use spot metering 98% of the time as I want my subject to be exposed and i dont care about the over all image.
I use Evaluative if I am taking photos of a horse even where I can not spot the horse because it is moving, so I try to get most of the image exposed and change it in post if needed.
@brav@northy... yeah that is the issue with focussing then recomposing. I rarely do it for that reason. Main issue with my camera though... only 9 focal points... dammit Canon!
@agima Awesome... thanks for that... I'm going to give it a go ... but I'll just share with you on FB lol.
Wow -- I am committed to learning through challenges but this seems to be THE challenge of challenges! I think I need remedial scaffolding! The explanations seem detailed but . . . let me see what I can figure out . . .
@myhrhelper@agima ok got to get my a... Out of bed and work on this. I'm doing a photo course and have been learning about metering so practice practice and get back to posting. Photo course check, need to do something about a computer next. @northy thanks so much for posting the four shots! Your comments re metering made me laugh but already what I am learning in class is making sense and a difference.
Darn sun not out yet....ok little more time in bed :)
@myhrhelper thanks for tagging me! This is an amazing challenge and I REALLY need to learn this! Thanks for hosting this, Brendan @agima. Your challenges have always been real challenges and I have learnt a lot from them.
@northy Iam with you I did the four shots also and need to be told what iam looking at.So I came back here to see what others had done.Feel like Iam missing something.
@northy Evaluative metering is always going to struggle with a scene like that. The more you bias the metering towards the brightest part the more underexposed it becomes as the camera tries to average it out.
I think an important part of this challenge is knowing when your meter is going to be fooled and you are going to have compensate for it yourself and snow is a great example.
If you include a lot of snow or anything white in your shot the camera will underexpose, the degree of under exposure will depend a bit on where in the scene you meter from and which metering mode you use but it'll usually be wrong and you'll have to give a bit more exposure than the meter recommends.
@iqscotland so which metering would you recommend for a scene like this? I was out in the snow today and quite cross with myself that I hadn't looked all the metering things up in my manual before but gone for the 'trial and error' method (which did not work in the end).
@iqscotland tx! that's a very good point about snow... and good info about the averaging aspect of evaluative... i have a bad habit of not overly worrying about exposure assuming that i can tweak it in post... but i know i really should actually LEARN this stuff... guess i definitely need to play with the settings some more!
@traeumerlein Evaluative or centre weighted but you'd still need to to add a stop or so and if I wanted to be sure I'd bracket s few shots.
@northy It doesn't matter which metering mode you use they are all averaging and prone to the same failings but most of the time they do a pretty fantastic job :)
Camera meters expect to be presented with scenes containing a range of brightnesses which can be averaged out to give you an accurate reading and nicely exposed shot. If you throw in a large bright or dark area the meter will still average it out and you'll get under or over exposure.
The top is what happens when you use auto metering to shoot a blank white card. You get grey.
The middle is the same white card but exposed using a meter reading taken from an 18% grey card.
The bottom is a shot of an actual grey card and is almost identical to the first shot of the white card.
I may not have selected a particularly difficult subject, but this is the result of my experiment. Having done so- I may look for a scene with more contrast
Here's the classic problem of too much light and dark contrast. See what I have to say about this in my album. The top is the first matrix metering, the second is a spot meter on a neutral color outside the bright sun, and the third is what I think we all do in practice, take the underexposed shot and :correct: it in the editor, with processing that is way better than the camera could do anyway.
this is very timely for me
I may have sort of messed up the meter on my Manual mode so that everything is pitch black even outside pics in the full sun. I fiddled with it and it's back to normal now and I've been meaning to figure out exactly what I did.
If you take a picture with wildly varying degrees of brightness like a black cat sitting in the snow, no matter which meter you pick aren't you always going to end up sacrificing something? Either the snow is too bright and the cat looks normal or the snow looks right but the cat looks like an angry black blob.
I've been reading about adn and dipping my toe into HDR for this very reason.
A great way to see the difference is spot meter on a bright part of the image, take the photo then spot meter on the dark part of the photo and take a shot..
It also helps if you have a heap of contrast in the photo.
My first set of shots for the challenge. I did shoot manual but there are still differences in the shots. My focus point is on the center of the tree trunk.
1. Spot meter
2. Matrix meter
3. Center meter
The spot metered and matrix metered are pretty similar. The matrix metered is a little lighter. There is a much greater difference in the center metered photo. I deliberately offset the tree so the sky would be in the center. With the camera metering the sky the tree and foreground are all shadowed. I could work with any of the photos but the center metered would be more of a challenge. I have an older camera and the foreground is pretty noisy.
@northy Your "lalala... not listening" made me laugh. Ditto.
I've read and re-read the challenge description. I feel a tiny bit smarter than yesterday with the rabbit but still not as smart as I'd like to be. Haha! Here are my musings...
@agima or anyone else who wants to comment:
I hear what you are saying to @wildernesswillie@aponi . A recent challenge taught me how to use manual focus but I'm curious to know why you don't use manual focus much. Sorry, different topic from this challenge but since you brought it up, what would you use instead of it?
With that note, how might you use manual, Av, and Tv in different situations. My proudest moment was moving away from Automatic to Manual and having been shooting mostly in manual, but now just starting to figure out Av and Tv. But, as I'm preparing to lots of photo shoots coming up, I'm not sure when to switch or whether to just stay in Manual. Maybe you can shed some basic light on best practices.
So on the note of manual, I shot the rabbit (not literally) yesterday in manual out of habit. But, tonight shot the mitten in Av. Much better turnout with the metering experiment, I think. It's an artificial set up so as soon as I'm able, I want to try a shot outdoors with the sun behind someone to try metering again.
Looking at Rabbit, how might I be able to improve on this. Settings were Av, f/2.8, ISO 400. Camera auto set shutter speed at 200.
I'm not totally getting focal point in relation to metering. Enlighten me.
Auto focus will not work due to lighting conditions
In setup shots.
I only use the manual setting when:
In the studio and I know the lighting will not change.
I want to keep the same exposure for a subject that is moving too fast for me to meter against. i.e I need lead time
I use AV 95% of the time as I like to control my DOF more than any other aspect of the camera and it is one thing that the camera does not control real well.
Does that help?
To help with the images above if you put some shade over your lens to stop the direct sunlight you would get better saturation and I would put in fill flash but hey this challenage isnt about those aspects. ;-)
I am confused!!!!
I hope someone can explain this to me.
I have a Nikon D5100 and I see the place to set spot, center, or matrix but I'm not sure what else to do. I did see when I have it on Center and press 1/2 way then release the button the line in the middle will move toward one side or area of the horizontal line. Do I then "up" the exposure setting based on what I see on that line?
What does this preset or evaluate mean? Where do I find that on my camera.
ALSO - I have a set of grey cards that I use to check the white balance. Do you use that for metering the exposure too?
@myhrhelper Great questions. Let me see if I can answer them.
I dont have a Nikon so I can only guess what you mean by the middle line. It is is what I think it is, it is the exposure of the image and it is indicating if the image is exposed or not. I must say I never look at it, but yes you adjust your camera settings so this is where you want it to be. In the middle does not mean that you have a correctly exposed image. It just means the camera thinks it is correctly exposed.
Yes you can use your grey cards to set your exposure as this is what the camera will be trying to expose to. Just a small note on that... If you do use a grey card ensure that it is in the same lighting as your main subject. or your subject may not be correctly exposed.
What do I mean by this.
If you have your grey card in the shade and you subject is in bright sun then you will be metering for the shade.
@myhrhelper Half pressing the shutter release turns the meter on and it'll start measuring the light reflected off whatever it's pointing at then displaying information in the viewfinder and the LCD too if that's how it's set up.
Depending on which exposure mode you're working in you'll see slightly different information.
In Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority you'll see the shutter speed or f-stop you selected along with the corresponding value the camera has selected, based on the meter reading, to give what it thinks will be the correct exposure.
If you see a scale in an Auto Exposure mode there will probably be a Hi/Lo warning too because the lighting is either too light or too dark for the setting you've selected. It's a +/- scale with over exposure(+) to the left, under(-) to the right and what the internal meter thinks is right in the middle. The scale is probably two stops in either direction and should at least give you an indication of which way you you'll have to adjust your exposure.
In Manual you'll see the same scale along with whatever f-stop and shutter are set and it's up to you to adjust either or both to set the right exposure based on the meter reading.
@iqscotland@agima Thank you both for answering my question. I hope to do some more with this. This isn't the best photo - it is just a pure practice - taking the photo of the neighbor's backyard from my window.
If I copied this down correctly the top photo is Center Metered, the Middle is Matrix and the bottom is spot.
Just to clarify - when I do a preset for the white balance it is doing the exposure metering automatically? This makes sense since technically color is just a reflection of light. Without light there is no color. White balance is adjusting the color so in order to do that it would have to adjust the light or exposure - right?
@myhrhelper Colour balance and exposure metering are two separate issues. Colour balance is about the colour of the light not how much of it there is :)
@myhrhelper No. The grey card, and I'm assuming it's an18% grey card specifically for photography, is simply something you measure from using your cameras meter and you'll do that in the Manual exposure mode.
You use the grey card because it's a known value, it reflects an amount of light which is consistent with what the camera expects to be measuring.
:)
O.K. this is the first challenge I'm entering. Newbie here who has totally fallen head over heals for this community.
To the challenge.... I have this and one other set to enter, tomorrow. My old (that is a relative term) Canon 20D has three metering selections.
Pattern=evaluative, Average=center weighted, and Partial. I find in this series of photos the differences to be so subtle that ...... In the top set with the flower : ) I set the focus point on the flower. On the bottles, I let camera set the focus point, by selecting all 9. The subtle differences show up more with the bottles. This has been an educating experiment for me, and has gotten me going on paying more attention to my settings.
This is my second entry for the in-camera metering challenge. I actually took this set of pictures before yesterdays entry, but put them together last. : ) I definitely see a more pronounced difference in these with the back-lighting, than with yesterdays, but still pretty subtle. Like I said yesterday, this challenge has gotten me back to playing with the camera settings again. Today I used exposure compensation to shoot yard birds and set all individual focus points. Haven't seen the results yet.
@agima Thanks Brendan. I think if I can just get used to switching over to PARTIAL for back-lit subjects I may yield better results...... but then it depends on the effect ones trying to achieve.
This challenge has definitely been a help to me and I thank you and Cassandra for it !
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Brilliant idea. Can't wait to take the challenge on.
Question. It says the challenge ends Feb 14 but that voting will take place Feb 5. Did you mean challenge ends Feb 4?
for a long time now i have played with the AF points - which i think (hope) determines what will be in focus... and i've noted that if i use a single AF point and focus on something dark, then, when in aperture priority mode, the shutter speed will be slower, while if i'm shooting the same scene, but focussing on a lighter point, the shutter speed will be faster... so i am not clear how or even whether this relates to the metering...
@rockinrobyn lol yep see, I shoot the same way too. Control over my focal point.
but yes... what you said... i often do this to test out what shutterspeed to set if i want to shoot manual... altho' i'm sure there's a much better way to go about it ;p
So chances you have spot metering on but this may not be the case if you are using the center focal point.
Let me expand on this a little....
As alrady mentioned when you half press your shutter it will lock the focus in for that point, it will also lock in the exposure for that point, so if you reposition then it will stay exposted to the orginal locked focal point.
Now having said that some cameras have the ability to lock the exposure without locking the focus. This allows you to point to a spot and expose against that, then reposition and set your focus.
@orangecrush @julz @northy @rockinrobyn @ozziehoffy @myhrhelper @brav @godsloverphotography
SOOC if you like, or processed if you like, as long as you don't touch up the exposure as this is what this is all about. ;-)
This will be a bit of a challenge to find something that will work. The best way to try it would be to have someone standing with their back to the sun and take their photo, then change setting and take the photo again. You might have to play with distance and how much light comes in but hey thats where you learn stuff..
For the record, I use spot metering 98% of the time as I want my subject to be exposed and i dont care about the over all image.
I use Evaluative if I am taking photos of a horse even where I can not spot the horse because it is moving, so I try to get most of the image exposed and change it in post if needed.
@agima Awesome... thanks for that... I'm going to give it a go ... but I'll just share with you on FB lol.
@traeumerlein @debrac @bernicrumb @geocacheking @northy @hehe1308 @rosiekind @tulipgirl @ferry_tjan @chapjohn @polarvrtx @_amyd_ @lstasel @wenbow @la_photographic @mikehamm @hehe1308 @saranna @pocketmouse @saranna @losthorizon @losthorizon @janmaki @debrac @debrac @losthorizon @petaqui @pschtyckque @pschtyckque @abhijit @swilde @spiralgrooves @spiralgrooves @onie @myhrhelper @mikehamm @tigerdreamer @jsw0109
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@northy thanks so much for posting the four shots! Your comments re metering made me laugh but already what I am learning in class is making sense and a difference.
Darn sun not out yet....ok little more time in bed :)
Centered
Matrix
For all three shots i used the evaluative meter setting in my camera:
Top: single focus point, focussing on a dark bit
Middle: multi-focus points
Bottom: single focus point, focussing on a light bit
I think an important part of this challenge is knowing when your meter is going to be fooled and you are going to have compensate for it yourself and snow is a great example.
If you include a lot of snow or anything white in your shot the camera will underexpose, the degree of under exposure will depend a bit on where in the scene you meter from and which metering mode you use but it'll usually be wrong and you'll have to give a bit more exposure than the meter recommends.
@northy It doesn't matter which metering mode you use they are all averaging and prone to the same failings but most of the time they do a pretty fantastic job :)
Camera meters expect to be presented with scenes containing a range of brightnesses which can be averaged out to give you an accurate reading and nicely exposed shot. If you throw in a large bright or dark area the meter will still average it out and you'll get under or over exposure.
The top is what happens when you use auto metering to shoot a blank white card. You get grey.
The middle is the same white card but exposed using a meter reading taken from an 18% grey card.
The bottom is a shot of an actual grey card and is almost identical to the first shot of the white card.
I may have sort of messed up the meter on my Manual mode so that everything is pitch black even outside pics in the full sun. I fiddled with it and it's back to normal now and I've been meaning to figure out exactly what I did.
If you take a picture with wildly varying degrees of brightness like a black cat sitting in the snow, no matter which meter you pick aren't you always going to end up sacrificing something? Either the snow is too bright and the cat looks normal or the snow looks right but the cat looks like an angry black blob.
I've been reading about adn and dipping my toe into HDR for this very reason.
This will not work in manual mode as manual mode expect that you know how you want the image exposed. This only works in the auto modes.
Yes you are exactly correct. Given your example you would sacrifice something, it just gives you the ability to decide what you want to sacrifice.
That that is the exact reason why we have HDR
1. evaluative
2. partial
3. spot - bright area
4. spot - dark area
5. center-weighted
Just so people can see the difference between what you spot meter against.
Will have to try again another day.
What setting was your camera on?
A great way to see the difference is spot meter on a bright part of the image, take the photo then spot meter on the dark part of the photo and take a shot..
It also helps if you have a heap of contrast in the photo.
1. Spot meter
2. Matrix meter
3. Center meter
The spot metered and matrix metered are pretty similar. The matrix metered is a little lighter. There is a much greater difference in the center metered photo. I deliberately offset the tree so the sky would be in the center. With the camera metering the sky the tree and foreground are all shadowed. I could work with any of the photos but the center metered would be more of a challenge. I have an older camera and the foreground is pretty noisy.
Processes photo. I used #1
I've read and re-read the challenge description. I feel a tiny bit smarter than yesterday with the rabbit but still not as smart as I'd like to be. Haha! Here are my musings...
@agima or anyone else who wants to comment:
I hear what you are saying to @wildernesswillie @aponi . A recent challenge taught me how to use manual focus but I'm curious to know why you don't use manual focus much. Sorry, different topic from this challenge but since you brought it up, what would you use instead of it?
With that note, how might you use manual, Av, and Tv in different situations. My proudest moment was moving away from Automatic to Manual and having been shooting mostly in manual, but now just starting to figure out Av and Tv. But, as I'm preparing to lots of photo shoots coming up, I'm not sure when to switch or whether to just stay in Manual. Maybe you can shed some basic light on best practices.
So on the note of manual, I shot the rabbit (not literally) yesterday in manual out of habit. But, tonight shot the mitten in Av. Much better turnout with the metering experiment, I think. It's an artificial set up so as soon as I'm able, I want to try a shot outdoors with the sun behind someone to try metering again.
Looking at Rabbit, how might I be able to improve on this. Settings were Av, f/2.8, ISO 400. Camera auto set shutter speed at 200.
I'm not totally getting focal point in relation to metering. Enlighten me.
Here's my second try experimenting with metering.
I only use manual focus when:
Auto focus will not work due to lighting conditions
In setup shots.
I only use the manual setting when:
In the studio and I know the lighting will not change.
I want to keep the same exposure for a subject that is moving too fast for me to meter against. i.e I need lead time
I use AV 95% of the time as I like to control my DOF more than any other aspect of the camera and it is one thing that the camera does not control real well.
Does that help?
To help with the images above if you put some shade over your lens to stop the direct sunlight you would get better saturation and I would put in fill flash but hey this challenage isnt about those aspects. ;-)
Great example of metering. Well done.
DUMB QUESTION!!
I am confused!!!!
I hope someone can explain this to me.
I have a Nikon D5100 and I see the place to set spot, center, or matrix but I'm not sure what else to do. I did see when I have it on Center and press 1/2 way then release the button the line in the middle will move toward one side or area of the horizontal line. Do I then "up" the exposure setting based on what I see on that line?
What does this preset or evaluate mean? Where do I find that on my camera.
ALSO - I have a set of grey cards that I use to check the white balance. Do you use that for metering the exposure too?
I dont have a Nikon so I can only guess what you mean by the middle line. It is is what I think it is, it is the exposure of the image and it is indicating if the image is exposed or not. I must say I never look at it, but yes you adjust your camera settings so this is where you want it to be. In the middle does not mean that you have a correctly exposed image. It just means the camera thinks it is correctly exposed.
Have a read of this:
http://www.all-things-photography.com/evaluative-metering.html
Yes you can use your grey cards to set your exposure as this is what the camera will be trying to expose to. Just a small note on that... If you do use a grey card ensure that it is in the same lighting as your main subject. or your subject may not be correctly exposed.
What do I mean by this.
If you have your grey card in the shade and you subject is in bright sun then you will be metering for the shade.
Depending on which exposure mode you're working in you'll see slightly different information.
In Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority you'll see the shutter speed or f-stop you selected along with the corresponding value the camera has selected, based on the meter reading, to give what it thinks will be the correct exposure.
If you see a scale in an Auto Exposure mode there will probably be a Hi/Lo warning too because the lighting is either too light or too dark for the setting you've selected. It's a +/- scale with over exposure(+) to the left, under(-) to the right and what the internal meter thinks is right in the middle. The scale is probably two stops in either direction and should at least give you an indication of which way you you'll have to adjust your exposure.
In Manual you'll see the same scale along with whatever f-stop and shutter are set and it's up to you to adjust either or both to set the right exposure based on the meter reading.
If I copied this down correctly the top photo is Center Metered, the Middle is Matrix and the bottom is spot.
You use the grey card because it's a known value, it reflects an amount of light which is consistent with what the camera expects to be measuring.
:)
O.K. this is the first challenge I'm entering. Newbie here who has totally fallen head over heals for this community.
To the challenge.... I have this and one other set to enter, tomorrow. My old (that is a relative term) Canon 20D has three metering selections.
Pattern=evaluative, Average=center weighted, and Partial. I find in this series of photos the differences to be so subtle that ...... In the top set with the flower : ) I set the focus point on the flower. On the bottles, I let camera set the focus point, by selecting all 9. The subtle differences show up more with the bottles. This has been an educating experiment for me, and has gotten me going on paying more attention to my settings.
This is my second entry for the in-camera metering challenge. I actually took this set of pictures before yesterdays entry, but put them together last. : ) I definitely see a more pronounced difference in these with the back-lighting, than with yesterdays, but still pretty subtle. Like I said yesterday, this challenge has gotten me back to playing with the camera settings again. Today I used exposure compensation to shoot yard birds and set all individual focus points. Haven't seen the results yet.
I would think that metering is one of those setting that most people forget it is there or dont understand it.
For me it is important when I am outside at an event where the light and subjects are always changing and moving around.
This challenge has definitely been a help to me and I thank you and Cassandra for it !
for the spot on light area one I used the lamp there on the cabinet
for the dark one I went with the shadow behind the monitor
Thank you all for your time to either play an active part in this challenge or just be part of the challenge thread.
Submission have now closed and I will post up the final images shortly.