What’s The Matter With Your Light Meter?

One of the things that your camera does is measure how bright light is; this is called metering. In our camera our meter can be seen while looking through our viewfinder, or sometimes on the LCD screen. Depending on how bright the light is and your  ISO setting (ISO = light sensitivity),  you or your camera pick an aperture  and shutter speed to give you an exposure. (Exposure =  the  amount of  light you let  into your camera to fall onto  your digital sensor or film.) Your exposure is based on your meter reading, your meter reading is based  on your ISO and the brightness/intensity of the light you are metering off of. If you are working  in fully automatic or program mode, your camera is doing all of this for you. You can stop reading here if  you are happy working this way. The last thing I want to do is make photography confusing or a chore for you. If you’re working in AV exposure (aperture value) mode, you pick the aperture (f-stop), your camera picks the shutter speed. If you’re working in TV exposure (time value) mode, you pick the shutter speed, your camera picks the aperture. If  you’re working in manual mode you get to pick your aperture and shutter speed. So far so good? The  matter with your meter is that it has  different metering patterns or modes and these patterns/modes operate (suggest exposures) in different ways.   While exposure modes dictate HOW light gets to your film or sensor (you let it in, your camera does or something in between), your  metering pattern and how you interpret your meter reading dictates HOW MUCH light gets onto your film or sensor. Open your camera manual and read about the different metering modes that your camera has and how they work. You’ll probably see all or some of the following metering patterns:

1. Matrix/Evaluative
2. Center Weighted
3. Partial
4. Spot

Find something to photograph. Whatever you choose to photograph make a picture,  using  each of the different metering patterns that you have. Take a look at the resulting photographs. Do the pictures look the same in terms of exposure (brighter or darker) ? Repeat this experiment under a variety of conditions. Try it on a cloudy  day, then a sunny day; while standing in front of someone, photograph them while their back is toward a window or a sunset; photograph a scene that has a lot of dark shadows and bright areas. You should begin to see that not only do different metering patterns give you different exposures, but some metering  patterns will handle different lighting and scenes better than other metering paterns. If you’re wondering which metering  pattern I prefer to work with; it’s  spot. Why? Because it’s the most precise pattern there is.

Similar Posts:

• Metering Patterns
• Lighting With Portable Flash Workshop Q & A
• The Camera – It’s Only A Tool.
• Introduction To Photography
• Shutter Speed

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 12th, 2009 at 2:29 pm. It is filed under Learn Photography and tagged with evaluative meter, matrix meter, metering and exposure, metering modes, Online Photography Classes, Online Photography Instruction, Online Photography Lessons, Online Photography Workshops, partial meter, photographic exposure, Spot meter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.