Photography 101 – Metering

Welcome back to the camera pen everyone! I hope you all had an AWESOME memorial day! I know I certainly did. Went to the beach with my wife and family and just relaxed…

Camera Metering Modes

But now it is back to business. This week I wanted to talk about a very interesting topic that I don’t think gets touched on a lot and that is Metering within the camera. Back in the days of film, you had to have a separate light meter to do the job. This light meter would ultimately take in the amount of light that was hitting your subject and spit out your shutter speed and aperture that you would need on your camera to give you an optimum exposure. A LOT has changed since then. These digital light meters are now built into the camera! If you are shooting on any kind of DSLR, then you have come into contact with the light meter.

Spot Metering

There are ultimately 5 different types of metering, although most cameras give you 3 options. The first of the lot is spot metering. With this, the camera only will measure a small amount of the frame, usually about 1-5%. This is usually metered in the center of the frame; however, cameras usually give you the ability to pick where you want your meter spot to be. This is usually the most accurate as it is not really influenced by the light coming in from other areas in the frame.

Center-Weighted Average Metering

The next type of metering is known as center-weighted average metering. For this, your camera will focus up to 80% of its metering on the center area of the viewfinder. From the center, the “weighted” area is usually feathered out to the sides. In using this type of metering, you are usually able to produce pretty consistent exposures as the majority of the time; your subject will fall into that 80% field.

Multi-Zone Metering

The last type of metering that is usually found on the camera is known as multi-zone metering. For numerous cameras, this can be found to be the default setting. For this particular option, the camera will measure the light in different areas of the frame (zones) and combine the results into the final metering exposure. The actual numbers that goes into this actually differs from camera to camera as there are numerous factors such as autofocus point, distance to the subject, and areas in or out of focus, into account. This seems to be the best option for the widest variety of users, which is why it is usually the default. However, this option also gives you the least amount of control as you are at the beck and call of the cameras programming.

Well, I hope that you found this weeks edition of Photography 101 to be fascinating! Stay focused and shoot something!

Josh D. Smith