Hello friends, welcome to another new topic in the series called “Learn Basic Photography“. In this series, we have read some basic lessons of photography in total 5 articles. Like “What is Photography? and its types“, “What Is Shutter Speed in Photography“, “What Is Aperture & its role in Photography“, “What Is ISO? Complete Tutorial On ISO” and “What is Composition In Photography? Rules Of Composition“. Today we will read a new lesson named “Understand Metering In Camera and Metering Modes”. Through this article, we will learn about the metering of the camera, what are the metering modes? How can we set the metering mode? In this article, we have tried to explain metering to you in detail. I hope you like this article.
Although we have tried that no topic should be left related to metering, but still if you find any mistake or shortcoming in this article, then you can convey your point to us through comment. And you must also share this article with your friends.
Understand Metering In Camera and Metering Modes
Metering Modes:- If you want to become a professional photographer, then it becomes very important for you to understand the metering mode. Because this mode protects your photos from being overexposed. With its help, you can increase the brightness only on some points, leaving the rest. So that you can see the focus subject well.
Whenever a student comes to us, they all have the same problem, either their photo comes out dark, or it is too bright which is not considered a good photo. And it doesn’t even look pretty.
But when they are taught about the metering mode, after that the quality of their photos gradually changes, that is, they look good.
What Is Metering?
How our camera determines the light of scene so that it can correct shutter speed, aperture and ISO is called metering. If we talk about it, there was no metering equipment in the cameras of the old days. It (metering) is a sensor, which tells us the amount and intensity of light. That’s why photographers used to measure light with an external (separate) light meter. And because of not having such advanced cameras, they could not see their output immediately. They had to rely only on these light meters.
But as technology progressed, cameras became more and more advanced. And in today’s era cameras (digital cameras) all have a light meter installed, which automatically determines the optimum exposer and reflected light. From which the photographer can set the exposure. Here below are some very effective and commonly used metering modes. Which will help a lot in making your photography easy and professional.
- Matrix Metering (Nikon), also known as Evaluative Metering (Canon)
- Center-weighted Metering
- Spot Metering
- Highlight-weighted Metering
Some different variations of the metering meter are also seen in some cameras. For example, Canon EOS models have “Partial Metering”. This meter is similar to Spot Metering to some extent but its area is more as compared to Spot Metering.
And some advanced camera have subject recorgnization mode. Like sony camera. This mode adjusts metering according to the subject.
Below you can see the camera meter when you are clicking pictures in manual mode. You should see bars going left and right in your camera’s viewfinder, centered at 0.
On the distance side, if your midpoint is on “+” instead of 0, then it means that your scene is too bright, due to which your photo will be overexposed.
And when you shoot in a place where the light is not enough, your point will move to the “-” side. You always have to click your photo at 0 point only, and you can do all this by increasing or decreasing the shutter speed.
The camera meter works in manual mode, but it also works when you’re in “Priority Mode“, Shutter Mode” or “Program Mode“.
Matrix / Evaluative Metering
You get to see this mode as the default mode in today’s digital cameras. We also call matrix mode as evaluative mode.
Matrix mode divides our frame into multiple zones, and it creates dark and light policies according to individual zones. It’s an advanced metering system that figures out the front of your frame with the help of machine learning algorithms and also adjusts exposure.
One factor that affects the matrix metering is where we (the photographer) set our focus point. After this it sees where the focus point is set, it only considers the focus point as the more important zone and the rest are less.
You should mostly use this mode during your photography because it determines the exposure very well. And when we do landscape or portrait photography, we also use this mode more. And it also gives us very good results.
Center-Weighted Metering
Hearing its name, one would have got the idea that this metering mode is dedicated to the center only. So you are thinking absolutely right. So we should also understand about this metering mode.
If you do photography then you sometimes have to click such a photo in which you need light balance only in the center. In which we have to give correct exposure only in the center. if you are shooting a natural light portrait and have placed your subject in the center of the frame, the camera will determine the correct exposure for their face while placing a significantly less importance on the background. does not see the point and only evaluates the middle area of the image.
Use this mode when you want the camera to focus only on the center of the frame, this works great for close-up portraits or large subjects in the middle of the frame.
Spot Metering
In this way, you have to use the mode when you have to evaluate the light only and only at the focus point. Spot metering will consider only the focus point as the main subject leaving the entire frame and will do exposure and light balance for that only.
As we saw above, the matrix divides the metering frame into smaller zones. And considering the zone that is formed at the focus point as the center, small zones are made in its left, right, up and down. But spot metering does the correct exposure of only the center zone considering it as the main point.
Do you see the focus point in your frame? Apart from focusing, it also selects the area you want to spot meter.
By default, the spot meter is at the center of the viewfinder. But you can change the location of the focus point to your desired metered light.
Because the light will be calculated only where our focus point will be. I can take accurate exposure even when our subject is in the corner. This mode is most effective in high contrast situations. You can use it if a backlit scene is turning your subject into a silhouette. If you place the spot meter on the subject’s face, your camera will likely get the correct exposure.
How to Change Camera Metering Mode?
We read about the metering mode and now we know how to change the metering mode in our camera. Mostly it is seen in the camera that there is a separate button for metering mode or we can also set the metering mode from the photo shooting menu. Here we are taking the example of some popular cameras.
- Canon R camera, in this we press the “Q” button and the metering ICON will be seen in your screen.
- Nikon Z camera, in this camera you can change the metering mode by going to the shooting menu.
- Even if your camera does not have a dedicated metering button, you can still meter with a custom button.
Unfortunately, the process of setting the metering mode varies not only from manufacturer to manufacturer, but also from camera model to model. For example
- Nikon D5500, it changes the metering mode via the Info button.
- Nikon D5 This camera has a separate button.
- Nikon Z9 You will find the metering mode option in the shooting menu.
But you can also assign it to the button.
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