I was out and about today in the unseasonably warm weather for this time of year in Blighty and I was messing with different metering settings.
I found that I was getting more accurately exposed images with Centre-Weighted metering when there was a high dynamic range within the image. Evaluative metering tended to overexpose a little.
Which made me think, do other photographers change the metering under certain lighting conditions or just leave it set at one or the other all the time?
This was with both my 5D2 and 1D4 in case people were wondering what's this to do with Canon.
I am all the way for center weighed. I am old school - can look at a scene and know how much EC I need to dial in, without the computer smarts coming in the way.
Besides, centerweighed is the only one that will keep adjusting during a burst. All other metering modes are locked in at the time of the first exposure for the duration of the burst. Not always a welcome thing.
stanj wrote:
Besides, centerweighed is the only one that will keep adjusting during a burst. All other metering modes are locked in at the time of the first exposure for the duration of the burst. Not always a welcome thing.
Interesting, indeed; I will give that set-up a test right away...many thanks, stanj...
For off-the-cuff shots, I usually keep it evaluative metering - also with 5DII and 1D IV, Sir Loin, - but use spot or center-weighted for small dark objects against brightness - birds, in particular...depending on the size of the dark object, sometimes the large spot works better...
For macro, since its a much more deliberate process, I may try two or three metering modes to learn how the camera thinks about the scene.
There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to metering. Center-weighted is great for portraits and if you want specific parts of the image to be correctly exposed. Evaluative is good if you have a lot of light and shadow and tricky/mixed lighting ... and for most general-purpose photography. I leave mine at evaluative metering but would switch to center-weighted and even spot metering for specific shoots.
center weighted exclusively and adjust with EC. I too found that all my Canon cameras (10D, 20D, 5D) have tended to overexpose with evaluative most of the time in an inconsistent manner, at least to my eye. To me, they all overexpose with center weighted too, but in a much more consistent way.
If you shooting animals/wildlife, I find centre metering is best. I would rather have the animal expose right and risk some blow out of background, then have my main feature (the animal) underexposed.
If I shoot landscape, it does not matter because I check the histogram and adjust as needed. Evaluative is less risky because the whole scene is averaged, but leaving it on evaluative is a recipe for disaster when a moose/bear, etc comes suddenly into the scene and you don't have time to check your histogram.
Evaluative under most conditions, spot under specific conditions.
Center-weighted is a primitive, pre-IC form of evaluative metering--a way to give less weight to the less important areas and more weight to the more important areas (presumed to be the center...where the focusing aid was manual cameras). In a situation that evaluative doesn't work, it's best to go straight to spot.
Personally, I would not want the exposure to change during a burst of exposures. I can think of a couple of circumstances in which it might be helpful, but those are all circumstances in which I'd rather have spot-metered in the first place.
Is it just me or are the icons the wrong way round for these two? To me the empty rectangle (centre weighted) should much more logically be Evaluative as it "evaluates" the whole fram, and the point plus brackets is much more logically Centre Weighted as it "weights" the centre.
I'm old school from the other direction -- started with 4x5 and handheld spot meters for "serious work", and now use Evaluative (or Nikon Matrix) Metering just about 100% with ambient and flash photography. If anything, I'll put the camera in Manual mode, but keep the Evaluative metering and chimping shots to confirm exposure of RAW files. I love Evaluative, and the promise of scene/subject recognition, and hope it will become more sophisticated with more zones and patterns.
RDKirk wrote:
Evaluative under most conditions, spot under specific conditions.
Center-weighted is a primitive, pre-IC form of evaluative metering--a way to give less weight to the less important areas and more weight to the more important areas (presumed to be the center...where the focusing aid was manual cameras). In a situation that evaluative doesn't work, it's best to go straight to spot.
Personally, I would not want the exposure to change during a burst of exposures. I can think of a couple of circumstances in which it might be helpful, but those are all circumstances in which I'd rather have spot-metered in the first place.
Also, at least with my 50D, I've found that the DR treatments Highlight Tone and Auto Lighting are more responsive to the Evaluative metering than the others.
I voted for "Centre-Weighted metering all the time" even though that's not what I do; there was no choice for "It depends on the circumstances," and I use CW more than the other modes. If my 20D had a spot meter I'd use that most often.
But almost as often as I use the built-in meter on the camera, I use either incident or spot readings from my Sekonic meter...also not a choice when voting.
BrianO wrote:
I voted for "Centre-Weighted metering all the time" even though that's not what I do; there was no choice for "It depends on the circumstances," and I use CW more than the other modes. If my 20D had a spot meter I'd use that most often.
But almost as often as I use the built-in meter on the camera, I use either incident or spot readings from my Sekonic meter...also not a choice when voting.
Sorry, I couldn't put every metering option in the poll, otherwise it'd been a list of options that'd gone on and on.
I just wanted to know what most people use between Centre-Weighted and Evaluative during everyday shooting.
Interesting that it's almost 50/50 at the moment for all the time.
15Bit wrote:
Is it just me or are the icons the wrong way round for these two? To me the empty rectangle (centre weighted) should much more logically be Evaluative as it "evaluates" the whole fram, and the point plus brackets is much more logically Centre Weighted as it "weights" the centre.
15Bit wrote:
Is it just me or are the icons the wrong way round for these two? To me the empty rectangle (centre weighted) should much more logically be Evaluative as it "evaluates" the whole fram, and the point plus brackets is much more logically Centre Weighted as it "weights" the centre.
