welcome if you're new here welcome back if you're not thank you so much for the support
if you're not new here but also if you're new here then hi i'm jess we talk about all things
photography mostly portrait photography and uh yeah so that's that uh would appreciate a subscribe
today we're here to talk about metering because i've been asked about this multiple times
it's hit the request box a few times as well and therefore it's about time we covered it off
metering isn't something that's important to me because i shoot on full manual we'll get to
that in a second but the important part to know is that metering does matter and it's important
that you understand how it works so that you can make it work for you chances are if you've clicked
on this video you're already interested in knowing what on earth metering is how metering works with
your photography and how to get the best out of it so you're in the right place let's start with what
metering is essentially metering is built into every single camera including your phone and what
metering does essentially is it reads the entire scene and makes a decision on what settings to
put the camera at to make sure that the exposure is good now the camera's version of the exposure
being good isn't always good at all so you just got to keep that in the back of your mind the
whole time now when it comes to your metering your camera is trying to find 18% grey don't worry
about that too much it's just important for you to know that if you're shooting against a super super
bright backlit sky and you're photographing a black labrador for example sat quite small in the
middle you're just going to basically end up with a black dot and nothing there because the camera
has taken the reading the vast majority of the image is super bright and therefore it's going to
set the exposure in a way that manages all of that bright light and puts it at the same level as 18%
grey that means that it will under expose the sky to basically make sure that the exposure is its
version of correct that's what metering is so it's important that you know how metering is working
and what's happening inside the camera essentially you half press your shutter the camera reads the
entire scene makes a call on the settings to go with and then you shoot your shot now that doesn't
give you a great deal of control and as i am a control freak i shoot on full manual so none of
this has any impact in my work if you photograph on full manual i.e nothing is up to the camera at
all apart from focus you know that means basically that metering isn't important don't worry about it
and forget anything that i just said if you shoot on something auto that could be auto iso it could
be aperture priority it could be shutter priority it could even be full auto i don't care but if
you've got something on auto your camera is going to be using that metering to make the decision
for the bit that is automatically decided so in terms of your metering that's when you need to
be concerned about it it's when you are leaving the camera to make a decision in settings which
is fine there's a time and a place for everything but in those situations you need to know how to
get the best out of it so that's where metering modes come in three main metering modes and the
three main metering modes basically are matrix otherwise known as the entire scene there's center
weighted which focuses on a more central area and then the spot those three are the oldies the
goodies they're the ones that have been there done that got the t-shirt but there are also others
i'm not going to reel off the others today because they're make and model specific
for example sony cameras have a highlight priority metering setting that's different to what we're
going to discuss today but the premise is exactly the same so when it comes to matrix metering you
would use matrix metering when the scene is quite evenly lit you've not got anything drastically
different or contrasty going on you've not got a super bright background or a super dark background
and your subject is kind of evenly balanced in terms of the exposure within the scene that will
give you the best results when you're using matrix mode because it's not picking anything specific
it's making a measure of all of the scene in front of it and setting up those settings appropriately
so that's matrix moving on to center weighted essentially this works best when your subject is
smaller in the frame and there is a contrast at play and you're wanting to make sure that
you're exposing for the subject and not for the background in those situations you want to be
making sure that the subject fills the center area of the image and in that way essentially
the camera is only going to focus on the exposure values within that central area if your subject
is in that central area then your exposure will be fine what if your subject is teeny tiny in
the frame for example a tiny little weeny dot on a landscape scene and you want to make sure that the
exposure is correct on the subject i'm not sure really in what situation this would be useful
for but spot metering really does have a time and a place and it's really useful to bring out if
nothing else is working and your exposure has gone a bit wrong spot metering uses a tiny little spot
it's usually about three percent of the image size but that does vary between makes and models
and what it does is it takes an exposure reading of that tiny little spot in the center of the
scene and then sets the settings appropriately for that spot so it ignores everything outside of that
most of the time when you're using metering there will be a shift that goes a little bit
too far from what you would have preferred in those situations you can override the exposure
that's been metered by using what's called exposure compensation so exposure
compensation and metering go hand in hand and essentially exposure compensation allows you to
override the decided exposure by the camera and basically increase it or decrease it respectively
by moving the little plus or the little minus one way or the other so you've got to be careful on
the sony camera specifically because that dial is very easy to move uh you might be underexposing by
three stops quite easily so you've got your exposure compensation which can override it
but there is another thing now i don't want to complicate the situation here too much but
if you have got really good exposure but the composition of the image is bad and of course
composition is life in those situations you want to recompose you can use what's called a/e lock
in terms of this what it does basically you can lock your exposure that the camera's metered previously
and then move and retake the shot so stick with me here what you would do is for example using a
center weighted or spot metering you would make sure that you get a really good meter in terms
of the light something that you're happy with so you put that spot on the subject
take your exposure reading hold down a/e lock to lock the exposure that's been metered and then move
to recompose focus and shoot in those situations you kind of have the best of both worlds but you
do need to be adept at using your fingers and it's worthwhile practicing so like i've said
at the start metering really doesn't bother me because i don't use it because i don't because
i set all my exposures manually but there is a time and a place so it's worthwhile practicing
it's worthwhile kind of setting up the extreme situations to see what would happen in those cases
because that is the best way of learning as always you only learn through failure so it's
worthwhile making some mistakes along the way because you'll remember it better next time
with that all said and done uh that was this week's video and i'll see you all again soon