CAMERA METERING EXPLAINED: Spot, Evaluative, Partial or Center?

now I don't know about you but when I first got started with photography all of these different modes and settings to meter an image well it felt like foreign language Matrix metering spot metering well it was enough to make my head spin but after a ton of trial and error and let's be real it a lot of mediocre photographs I finally started to wrap my head around how metering works and more importantly how to use it to step up my photography game so stick with me because understanding metering might just be the key to unlocking

your camera and your full potential okay okay first things first what the heck does metering even mean anyway well in simple terms it's how your camera measures the light in a scene to determine the ideal exposure settings so the image isn't too dark and it isn't too bright essentially Jo camera looking at the scene and going hm how bright or dark should this photo actually be back in the olden days definitely kind 10 20 years ago photographers had to carry around a separate light meter to work all this out a separate tool that was way

before I got started in the hobby but a light meter you'd essentially pointed at the object or the scene that you're trying to get the meter reading of take a reading and then manually adjust your camera settings according to what the light meter told you sounds like a whole lot of faffing around and hassle right well thankfully modern digital cameras have built in metering systems that do all this hard work for us camera looks at the scene that you pointed at and it can either give you directions as to the aperture shutter speed and ISO

or it can do it all itself to create a balanced exposure but here is the thing the camera doesn't doesn't know what the most important element of a scene is it's a camera it's not it's not a human it's not an artist right and that's where the different metering modes come in so first up let's talk about Matrix metering or evaluative metering if you are a cannon shooter this is probably the default metering mode on your camera right now and for good reason it's like the Jack of all trades of metering modes when you're in

Matrix mode your camera looks at the entire scene and tries to determine the best overall exposure imagine your shooting a beautiful landscape with a bright blue sky some fluffly white clouds and a green grassy field Matrix meeting will look at all of those elements the brightness of the sky the shadows in the clouds the midtones in the grass and then tries to find a happy medium between all this to make the scene look good and that's great for those times that you want everything in the photo to be somewhat the best it can evenly exposed

without anyone area being too bright or too dark and personally as an amateur photographer who do mainly landscape photography I leave my camera to Matrix mode like 90% of the time it's reliable it's versatile and it works for most shooting situations of course there are always going to be exceptions to this rule though so what happens for example if you're shooting a portrait and you want to prioritize your subject's face or if you're photographing a small backlit subject against a bright bright background that is where the other metering modes can come in handy because what

we don't want to do here is take an average of the scene we want to focus on getting it exposure right on our subject so next up we have Center weighted metering and as the name suggests unsurprisingly this mode gives priority to the center of the frame when it's trying to determine the exposure of the image essentially it's like your camera is looking at the entire scene via tunnel vision just down the middle so let's say you're taking a photo of a mate against a bright sunny background with Matrix metering the camera might try to

balance out the exposure between your friend's face and the bright Sky resulting in a photo your friend is silhouetted out because your camera probably can't handle the dynamic range between the bright and the dark here but with Center weighted metering the camera if you put your friend's face in the center of the camera in the center of the frame it will prioritize this part of the image in which case your friend's face will be exposed correctly now the background might end up massively Overexposed but at least your subject is going to be properly lit and

exposed within the image now if you shoot portraits often while I find Center weighted metering especially useful it's a great way to ensure that the most important part of the photo is properly exposed even if the rest of the scene is a little bit off but what happens when the subject isn't in the center of the frame what happens if you're trying to take a photograph of a of a small backlit subject against a bright background and perhaps you frame the photo up with the rule of thirds so that your subject is offc Center on

one of the lines of the rule of thirds well that's where spot metering come in spot metering is like the sniper rifle of metering modes it only measures the light in a specific tiny area of a frame around 1 to 5% depending on how you've got it set up and when you're in spot metering mode your camera is only going to consider the brightness of the area underneath your selected Focus point when determining exposure and this is so so useful for those tricky lighting situations where your subject is a lot brighter or darker than the

rest of the scene so let's say you're trying to photograph a a white bird against a dark background with Matrix or Center weighted metering when your subject is not in the center your camera might try to bright up the entire scene which is going to blow your bird out but with spot metering you can put your focus Point directly on the bird and let the camera expose specifically for that one area now the background might turn out darker than you'd like but at least your white bird is going to be exposed properly and if you

take a pictures of the birds that's what you're going to care about nine times out of 10 right so you can use spot metering when doing Wildlife photography especially when you're trying to photograph small backlits birds or squirrels or whatever you're trying to grab and it's also handy in high contrast situations like a shadowy forest where there's patches of really blinding light and if you exposed for that the dark interesting leaves would be absolutely blown out or let's say you're taking a picture of a bird in Flight against a bright Sky you don't really care

how bright the sky is to a to a certain extent right what we don't want to do is expose mainly for the sky in which case the bird is going to be dramatically underexposed and we're going to lose all the detail in the bird itself now some cameras also have a Mode called highlight weighted metering which is kind of like spot metering if it's took 6 months of steroids basically it looks at an entire scene but then gives extra priority to the brightest areas when determining exposure and this can be really useful if you're shooting

a scene with lots of bright highlights that you want to preserve perhaps you're a wedding photographer and it's a bride's white wedding dress or maybe there's a shiny metal object with with highlights and bright elements within it well with highlight weighted metering your camera will try to avoid blowing out those bright areas even if it underexposed the rest of the scene a little bit now personally I'd never use highlight weighted meter in what I do instead is kind of take a more manual approach of I will have zebras on when something is clipping when the

highlights are clipping and I will manually reduce my exposure so we get no clipping in the image this metering mode is essentially trying to do that without you having to fat around with the settings just keep in mind that it can make the rest of your image very dark if you have just one massively highlighted element within the image sometimes like within a landscape Sunset you might be happy for the sun to blow out so then you get correct exposure across the rest of the image because in real life when you look at a sunset

that is blown out your eyes balls even though they have more dynamic range than a camera sensor they still can't look at the foreground and the midr and the sunset and keep everything in the dynamic range that it handles so that's going to be blown out it's going to seem natural for it to be blown out in your photos and so you got to be careful with this Mee mode it's not always going to be the right choice for every scene so that was a lot of stuff right well with all of these different metering

modes to choose from how do you know the one that's going to work the best how do you decide which one you're going to use well like a lot of things in photography it depends on the situation that you're in if I'm shooting a scene where everything's going to be somewhat evenly exposed like a landscape or a group photo of friends I'll just stick with the Matrix metering it's such a reliable easy mode that works well in most situations but if I'm shooting a portrait or a scene where my subject is in the center of

the frame I might switch to Center weighted metering to prioritize the subject's face or body and if I'm photographing small backlick subjects or I'm shooting in dramatically high contrast situation this is when I do and I rarely do this right but if I'm doing Wildlife photography I will usually reach for spot metering this is to make sure that my subject is properly exposed because I've got loads of nice pictures of deers and and and birds of prey from the walk that I go and do with my dog a couple of times a week and I

don't really care if I've got a picture of a deer if the deer's face is properly exposed everything else is a bit vignetted and dark around it it actually looks quite nice so when there's a clear subject such as wildlife photography I absolutely put it in spot metering mode and I then just Blast away at the images of course these are General guidelines there are always going to be exceptions to the rules and no matter which metering mode you choose you can always use exposure compensation to fine choose the exposure if needed exposure conversation lets

you tell the camera to yeah do what you're doing that's fantastic I would like you though to nudge the scene brighter or nudge the scene darker no matter what the metering is suggesting and this can be really handy when the light is getting pretty particularly tricky or you know that the camera is predictably and reliably wrong you can adjust the exposure conversation one way or another to get the scene how you want it now I want to showare one last metering tip that's been a total absolute GameChanger for me this is the technique for manually

metering a scene without even taking a test shot first switch your camera to spot metering mode and put your focus point on a on a neutral tone in the scene that's going to be something that's not too bright not too dark a patch of green Grass Works particularly well here or your hand can work quite well in this situation or if you're in your studio a 50% gray card is the most accurate way of going about doing this then once your camera is pointed at that neutral tone adjust your camera settings your aperture shutters speed

and your ISO until the exposure meter which you'll find on most cameras reads zero and well that is it you've just manually metered the scene and you're ready to start shooting this technique takes obviously a few more steps than just using the automatic metering within your camera itself but it's especially useful if you're shooting in manual mode and you want to get the exposure right for your eye for what you're looking at as a human rather than a camera that is just using computation to do all of this it allows you to get the meeting

right without all that guess work it's a little shortcut that I use every now and again so that I get the exposure right in that scene in that environment every single time and if you want to continue leveling up your photography game why not click the video that's on the screen right now it's all about tweaking your ISO your the settings your metering to get incredible photos when you got really crappy light