Center Weighted Metering DSLR

[PopsPhotos]

Pops - you're too hard on yourself - I've never thought of you as being upside down!

Ah, but I'M not the one upside down. You're the one living on the bottom of the world.

Pops

[Steaphany]

I am hoping to boil it down to something a bit more rule-of-thumb that one could do in one's head.

I can give you a quick tip for situations when you want to quickly get exposure right when taking dark and bright area meter readings.

1. Set your camera to center weighted or spot metering and select either shutter or aperture priority mode and set the shutter or aperture to the desired value.
2. Take a reading from a dark area, a light area, and note the values, If you are working in shutter priority mode only the aperture will differ, if in aperture priority mode then the shutter will vary.
3. Set your camera to manual, set the fixed value as you did in Step 1
4. Set the varying value to the Dark area metered measurement and then sweep this to the Light area measurement, counting the number of steps that it takes.
5. Divide this by two and then turn the exposure back towards the dark by the calculated number of steps.
6. You're done, shoot the photo

It does not matter if you camera operates with half or third EV increments, the smaller interval will just give you more increments to step through.

The most involved aspect of this method is counting and a rough divide by 2.

Here is an example :

• In Aperture Priority mode, set the f/ number set to 4
• The dark area meters at 1/8th Second
• The bright area meters at 1/1000th Second
• In Manual Exposure mode, set the f/ number to 4 and the shutter to 1/8th Second
• Advance the shutter to 1/1000th counting the number of steps. If your camera operates in half EV values you'll count to 14, if in third EV values you'll count to 21
• Turn the shutter back towards the dark by half this number which will be 7 or 10 depending on your camera
• The camera is now set to f/4 at about 1/100th Second, Shoot the photo

If you work through the math, you'll find this short cut does the same thing as my mathematical method through a sacrifice of holding either the shutter or aperture fixed.

[revi]

Easiest way with difficult scenes is to simply spot meter the brightest portion and increase the exposure by 2 stops

That won't satisfy the zone system 'believers' though, way too simple...

Remco

[Colin Southern]

That won't satisfy the zone system 'believers' though, way too simple...

Remco

Probably not

Point is though that if you have a high contrast scene then it's usually better not to blow the highlights -- so my way works; and if you have a very low-contrast scene then (a) normal metering will probably expose it just fine, but if it doesn't then "my way" will probably over-expose (but not blow the exposure on) the capture, and it can be easily adjusted back down in post-processing (so my way is still OK there too).

[revi]

I see your point.

I'll have some occasions to try your system soon (the dance sessions on scene: at least in part black costumes on a black scene with white details and direct lighting, gonna be fun ). I guess I'll try and meter on skin and add 1 EV (or should I still add 2?) and I still might have to accept some blown highlights to get some shadow detail...

[Colin Southern]

I'll have some occasions to try your system soon (the dance sessions on scene: at least in part black costumes on a black scene with white details and direct lighting, gonna be fun ). I guess I'll try and meter on skin and add 1 EV (or should I still add 2?) and I still might have to accept some blown highlights to get some shadow detail...

With manual exposure / spot metering you can spot-meter anything that's illuminated (so black illuminated fabric is OK, but not shadows) - but - you just have to apply the correct amount of offset ("EC"). The big issue with theatre lighting is that it keeps changing though so personally, I'd stick the camera on Av - open up the lens - max out the ISO - shoot RAW - and only dial in EC if you need it. The camera has all sorts of automation ... why not just use it to your advantage? (no point buying a dog and then barking yourself!)

The thing I like most about spot-metering is that you can use it to work out how anything you point at is going to expose (for a given shutterspeed / aperture / ISO combination) because the exposure meter still works. With the correct exposure set you can point it at something white and the meter will read +2 EV - point it at something black (not shadow) and it'll read -2EV etc (the 1Ds3 allows you to record up to 8 spot-meter readings, and graph them on the exposure meter