@steampowered i didn't get why we were learning it, what it can do or how to do it - i'm sure i had my settings all over the place - luckily was not complete waste of time thisafternoon as the light was lovely paul :o)
@gozoinklings It can be very important if you are physically trying to pinpoint exactly what you want to be properly exposed. Looking at your picture, you exposed for the bright highlights on the sea. This made them the area to be made into a "good exposure" but to do that your camera has had to "dim" them down thus anything that is darker becomes correspondingly "dimmer"
@steampowered that makes sense - all the pictures were quite a bit darker than i thought they'd be but the sparkles came out well on some - thanks for explanation paul
Love this, what ever you did worked. I don't really understand metering, but I use spot metering with a lot of bird shots, think it works not sure why!!
it does look like night! spot metering has some very strange effects when the contrast is really great, I was using it earlier for an indoor portrait, i didn't post it, but i was noticing the difference it made between correctly exposing for the face but having the background go dark , or totally over-expose the highlights a lot.
Looks more like a moonlit night.