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02/09/2007 12:57:08 AM · #1 |
Hi, I am fairly new to photography. I have a Nikon D70s and I am very curious how to use spot metering.
Can anyone help me and explain in detail how to set spot metering and adjust the necessary exposure settings to get a nicely exposed photo. An example would be of good help.
Thanks |
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02/09/2007 01:08:03 AM · #2 |
| spot-metering is useful when you shoot in extreme contrasting conditions, like a subject with strong back light, or a bride and groom one with a black shirt while the other white. |
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02/09/2007 01:14:04 AM · #3 |
metered off my dark subject as mojority of the scene was very bright |
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02/09/2007 01:15:10 AM · #4 |
Originally posted by crayon:
spot-metering is useful when you shoot in extreme contrasting conditions, like a subject with strong back light, or a bride and groom one with a black shirt while the other white. |
never take photo advice from a person who owns a mattel barbie camera!!!! LOL
i'm kidding! :)
just remember that google is your friend:
//www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-metering.htm
this is quite a good tutorial! :)
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02/09/2007 01:18:49 AM · #5 |
Spot meter basically sets the selection to middle gray, with equal exposure above and below the spot meter.
With Nikon, the spot meter is tied with the focus point, so you can move the spot meter around the focus area. |
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02/09/2007 01:22:44 AM · #6 |
I can't help you with how to set a D70 to spot metering mode, because I've never used one. But I can tell you what spot metering is FOR.
1. A camera's light meter has no idea how bright or dark is the value of the surface/s it is metering; it only knows how much light is falling on the meter. It could be a LOT of light bouncing off a black wall or very little light bouncing off a white wall, the camera doesn't know.
2. For this reason, meters are set to "assume" that the average value of everything they are reading is a "zone 5 gray", the middle value of the white-to-black gradations you see under every image when you are voting. The camera calculates and sets an exposure to render this as zone 5. If you meter a white wall and do what the camera says, you'll have a gray wall. Meter a black wall, you'll have a gray wall. Set the camera to a full-field exposure and meter a wall that's half black and half white, the camera will average the exposure out and you'll have a wall that is both black and white, "correctly" exposed.
3. So the rule is, the camera underexposes bright things and overexposes dark things, if the scene is predominately one or the other. Since in "typical" photography a scene is usually a fairly even mix of lights and darks, the averaging meters work fairly well on the whole.
4. You have something called "EV compensation" that allows you to dial in better exposure when experience tells you it is called for. So, for example, if you're shooting a scene in broad daylight with a lot of snow, you know the camera will underexpose and you dial in +1 or even +2 EV to compensate for that and keep the whites bright.
5. With spot metering the camera takes all its data from a limited circle in the image. When you are trying to be precise with your exposure, to avoid blown bright areas or blocked up dark areas, you can use spot metering as a basis for calculating the best exposure. This is best done in full manual mode, where you can adjust either shutter speed, aperture, or both to move a pointer on a bar.
6. When the pointer is in the middle, whatever is being metered will render as zone 5. If you are metering shadow areas, you have to decide if you want them to be "full detail" or "trace detail". Those would be zone 4 and zone 3, respectively. So you would point the spot meter circle at the shadow area and dial in 1 stop or 2 stops less exposure than the camera is indicating.
7. You can then point the meter at the bright areas, leaving the camera settings the same, and see where the exposure of these areas "falls" relative to the dark areas. If you have the shadows set to zone 4 and this makes the brights go to zone 8 or higher, you have a problem: you have blown your brights out. They are 4 or more stops brighter than your dark areas. You'll need a compromise exposure.
8. As a rule, the most important thing to look for in digital exposure is to avoid blowing the important bright areas off the end of the histogram, because you can never recover from that no matter how you post process the image.
That's it in a nutshell. Spot metering requires practice/experience to work well, but it is a skill worth acquiring.
R.
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02/09/2007 01:28:07 AM · #7 |
Uh oh, bringing out the zone system. :)
I good way to look at the world though. |
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02/09/2007 01:32:42 AM · #8 |
Originally posted by jaysonmc:
Uh oh, bringing out the zone system. :) |
Not really; we just have no better way to describe these things available to us. "Zone System" is much more than just describing the shades of gray and naming them :-)
R.
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02/12/2007 08:32:02 PM · #9 |
Thanks everyone for sharing your knowledge about my question.
@Bear_Music: Your post is really amazing. I just still don't get it. I dont know where the actual meter is. I am new to this and I am really trying to learn. |
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02/12/2007 09:18:49 PM · #10 |
Wow! Thanks, Bear! I think something just clicked! That was awesome!
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02/12/2007 09:27:35 PM · #11 |
Originally posted by dont4get_im:
@Bear_Music: Your post is really amazing. I just still don't get it. I dont know where the actual meter is. I am new to this and I am really trying to learn. |
Your camera probably doesn't have the grid bar exposure meter which exists on digital SLRs. Instead, look for numbers on your camera's viewfinder such as: 0.0 (middle gray), -0.3 (underexposure by a third of a stop from middle gray), -0.7 (underexposure by 2/3rds of a stop from mid gray), +0.3 (overexposure by a third of a stop), etc. These numbers will show you the exposure level for the aperture and shutter speed you have set and will usually be next to the aperture and shutter speed settings on your viewfinder. Put your camera in manual mode and play with aperture and shutter speed to see what effect it has on the exposure level.
Message edited by author 2007-02-12 21:31:00. |
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02/12/2007 09:31:31 PM · #12 |
Originally posted by boysetsfire:
metered off my dark subject as mojority of the scene was very bright |
As an aside, you employed metering for a scene with HDR (high dynamic range) such that it would expose your subject as desired -- i.e., the man (and dog) in this scene. However, you couldn't have spot metered in its purist sense because the 350D lacks a true spot meter. Nice capture though. :)
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