Hey, today we're talking about your
camera's metering modes, what are they,
and how would you use them?
I'll tell you after the intro.
Hey everyone welcome
back to Ask David Bergman, as you know of
of course David Bergman here answering your
photography questions.
Today I've got one from Jeff G and he asks when you shot
with flash in LA at night what metering mode did you use to get the ambient
exposure no one ever mentions that well Jeff I'm
sorry no one has ever mentioned that to you what he's referring to is a video I
did a few weeks ago with Marissa in LA and we were outdoors and I figured out
the ambient exposure first and then added in some flash but yes you need to
be able to figure out what the exposure is and that's where metering modes come
in let me talk about metering for a second and how it works I did another
video earlier this year about using a light meter and a light meter an
external light meter reads the incident light that's hitting your subject what
your camera reads is the reflected light so the light that hits your subject and
then bounces back and comes into the camera the camera reads that and tries
to figure out if you're on any kind of an automatic mode like aperture priority
or full program or auto ISO or anything like that where the camera is deciding
what your exposure should be you have to set a metering mode and tell it what you
want it to look at that's basically what metering modes do so most cameras have a
number of different modes in general any variation of the four that are in this
Canon EOS R this is the EOS our mirrorless with the 2870 f2 lens on it I
have the grip on here because I just like it to be a bigger heavier body and
then on top here is the atomos ninja - that's a monitor just so that you guys
can see through the lens of what I'm shooting but I normally don't shoot with
that on a real photo shoot outside of these videos so metering mode so what
I'm gonna do is go through the four modes that are in this camera again most
camera companies have a variation of these either three or four different
modes and you could go out and figure out exactly what those are on your
camera but the way it works on this here we're here with Elizabeth hey Ellie
so we're gonna just demonstrate her she's against a white background and the
four metering modes here are we're gonna start with evaluative that's the default
and most cameras some cameras call it matrix but it's it's the default on most
cameras and what that does is your camera is gonna look at the entire scene
and every camera company has a really complex algorithm that it uses that we
don't really know exactly what it is to break the scene up in different zones
and then it sort of figures out what the best exposure should be now the cool
thing about the evaluative mode is that it actually prioritizes whatever is in
focus so in this case I'm focusing on Ellie and so it's gonna prioritize it's
gonna put more weight when it's figuring out exposure on her because it knows I'm
focused on her so I probably want her exposed properly and by the way when I
talk about proper exposure what the camera thinks proper exposure is is
middle gray 18% gray is what they call it so forget about all the color in the
image and just think about the brightness and darkness it's trying to
average everything out so that it's all 18% gray it doesn't want anything too
bright it doesn't want anything too dark that way everything sort of registered
in the camera and it can be reproduced either in a print or on a computer
screen or whatever the case may be so the evaluative mode is exactly that
it just looks at the entire scene this is a good way for most beginners just to
kind of get started it will the camera kind of takes over and lets you let you
just get pretty close in most cases because it's looking at everything so
each of these other modes that will give you a little bit more control it's
taking the automatic miss back from the camera and giving it to you so let's go
through the different modes here the next one down is called center-weighted
and that's also an a wide-area mode that's looking at the entire scene
however it's as it States it's putting more weight it's putting more priority
on the center of the frame so in this case when we're photographing Elizabeth
she's in the center of the frame there's a big white background behind it but you
can see that it has set at 645 a second I'm shooting at f/2 at 1600 and it's
setting I'm at aperture priority so it's setting the shutter speed if we go back
to evaluative when it looks at the whole scene it's saying 800 of them a second
is what it should be at now that is because it's seeing all that white even
though it's putting more priority on the Sun the subject it's seeing a lot of
that white once I go into the center weighted mode
it's now focusing more on her on the middle of the frame it's her hair is
dark her face is bright so it's looking mostly at that and it's pretty close
right now it's saying 800 640 it's it's pretty close to the same as the
evaluative because again that evaluative is prioritizing the subject now if we go
to the next one down we're looking at the partial metering mode and what that
is is now it's taking a smaller part in the center of the frame partial metering
in this case is usually about 10% of the frame or so and you can see that circle
there and it's only looking inside that circle to calculate exposure it's not
looking at anything else in the frame so if you think about it that's giving you
a bit more control because where you put that circle will change what the
exposure is so in this case the circle is mostly on her face it's got a little
bit of her hair and just maybe a sliver of the background and it's that same
exposure that's 6:40 the second however if I move down so it's like more of her
shirt and hair because that's darker now it has dropped my exposure all the way
down at two hundredths of a second that's a good like two stops almost
brighter than I was at technically her hair and her shirt are exposed properly
whatever that means you know the middle gray they are exposed properly but
that's way too bright I would never actually expose that way because her
face you can see is way overexposed so if I move back so her face is in that
center area then it's gonna give me the proper exposure again at 6:40 so that's
only gonna look and by the way if I move all the way out to the white you can see
what happens there we got a 25 hundredths of a second because now it's
only looking at that white and it's trying to darken everything down so that
that white is middle gray so it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do it
really just depends on what you want and then the final metering mode is called
spot metering and it's basically the same as partial it's just a smaller area
it's anywhere from 2 to 4 or 5% of the image it's a really small area again
that that will give you the most accuracy if you get that point right
where you want it the challenge with that
of course is that you've got to get it right in the right spot if you have a
subject that's moving around it might be hard to keep it right on her face for
example instead of moving over accidentally to her hair or to the
background or to anything else that's gonna screw up that exposure so you can
see when I move off again to the background it's going to be way off when
I move down to her hair it's gonna be way overexposed its way underexposed on
the background so as I go back on her face which is what I want to expose for
it gives me the proper exposure so those are generally the for meeting modes that
pretty much every camera has now you asked about specifically what metering
mode I use the truth is here's the big secret I really don't use them at all
because I'm shooting manual now there's a couple ways you can use manual and I'm
not suggesting that manual doesn't that metering modes have no impact the meter
is still working but if I switch over to manual for example the meter is still
down there you can see it at the bottom and if I open up if I slow down my
shutter speed and I'm overexposed you can see the meter has moved up and you
can see if I go the other way the meter has moved down however the cameras not
changing it for me automatically I have to make the decision based on that so if
I want to use the meter I can set the metering mode I want and then look at
what it's suggesting as being a part of the proper exposure based on my metering
mode and where I have the you know whether I'm on a spot or evaluate it or
whatever and then I can choose what to lock in and how to expose it that's how
I shoot this the truth is honestly most of the time when I'm setting my exposure
in a scene where the light isn't changing like this one for example I
will not even really look at the meter I take a picture and I use the screen on
the back I take one quick look at it and make sure it looks good and then I turn
it off and I just shoot away and I don't even I'm not even looking at that meter
if I if I was on an auto mode and I was on spot meter for example and I was
shooting frame to frame and I put her off-center let's see what happens here
if I'm on let's go back to aperture priority right and I'm on the spot meter
mode right and it's right on her face that's great but then as I'm shooting
let's say I zoom all the way out and I'd want to put her off-center if I
go like that and then if I'm on any kind of an auto mode it's not going to work
because that spot is gonna change I want to use that spot to figure out the
exposure it's at 6:40 in this case and then I'm gonna go to manual I'm gonna
lock it in at 6:40 and then I can just shoot away I can recompose I can move in
I can move out I can do whatever I want there and not have to worry about the
exposure changing so that's how I shoot I really don't use the metering modes
that often once in a while I might use it just to do a quick check that's about
it so that's why I didn't mention the metering modes in that video because
it's really not relevant to me for the most part but by understanding what they
do you can take control of your exposure and get the exact image you want hey
Jeff thanks for asking that question I appreciate it listen go to ask David
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