molson wrote:
[Center-weighted is like partial, only much bigger, and hence more prone to errors
Arguably, less prone, in that details of a different tonality will occupy less of the metering area. In practice, I will use it only if the middle area inside the oval (1 series) will average to 18% and does not contain too many largish details.
It\'s nothing at all like evaluative.
Agreed. Evaluative seeks to arrive at a \"correct\" exposure for the scene, while the others deliver an 18% one weighted according to some function over area. I think evaluative metering originated on the Minolta SRT-101 (in the 1960s, BTW), also as a weighted function. However, matrix metering on Nikon is a black box which \"works when it works\" and it seems Canon wants us to think of their evaluative metering like that too. You can use such a system two ways:
1. You have no time at all to spend on metering and can live with a 10% (or whatever) chance of missing it completely.
2. You will take the same types of shots all day and have developed by experience or formal experiment a table of exposure compensations to apply. At least one bird photographer has published a book with such a table in it. That table might be \"muscle memory\" for some.
I\'d be curious to know from those of you who do use it in case (2) how much work it was to develop that table and whether you had to do it all over again when switching cameras.
Apr 25, 2011 at 08:55 AM
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