What metering do you use (and how does it work anyway)?
- Thread starter Marsu42
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Center weighted because I don't want the AF point to influence my choice of exposure. I will always dial in +/- EC before the exposure, judged by the zone distribution of the scene I want to photograph. So no right choice for my in the topic since I am not trying to be "lucky" but try to dial in the actual exposure.
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I normally rely on the great metering system of my 7D and let it choose how to meter... 
In very difficult situations I use spot metering with AE lock.
This combo has worked very well in the past and hopefully it will stay like this until 150k actuations... :
In very difficult situations I use spot metering with AE lock.
This combo has worked very well in the past and hopefully it will stay like this until 150k actuations... :
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This. If the scene looks fairly well balanced, then I just shoot with what the camera says (+ a 1/3 ETTR - which is my default). If the scene looks tricky, then I usually have an idea in my head of what exposure compensation to use and adjust accordingly, checking the histogram after the first shot. I flip between evaluative and spot metering, depending on the situation.mackguyver said:Evaluative with exposure compensation unless I'm shooting people or high DR photos. Then I use spot most often. Sometimes I ignore metering altogether and just use M mode and the histogram until I'm happy
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Marsu42 aka Meinungsforschering-Zwei-und-Vierzig: I just looked at the poll again and noticed option 5 - manual exposure. I'm not sure that should really be there as the camera is still using the metering mode (Eval, partial, spot, or center-weighted) to determine the exposure level seen in the viewfinder indicator. I'm guessing you meant this in regards to people who ignore the EV level indicator and use a handheld meter, the Sunny-16 rule/Zone etc., or the histogram.
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mackguyver said:
Right, good point there
... this option is there to basically cover "everything else" that doesn't rely too much or not at all on the camera's metering. That's because the intention of the thread is to find the best metering mode when in a hurry w/o even time for ae lock.And in full M mode even looking at the camera's metering, you still have to think more when bringing the little green pointer to the center line.
. Btw esp. on the 6d this procedure is a pita: In comparison to the 5d2 (same on 60d) the green info line below the frame is very small and very hard to read when in bright ambient.Because you noticed, you're getting the "Schlaubi Schlumpf" (smart smurf) award of the thread :-> ... I don't know know if these popular comics have made their way over the great lake to marvel's superhero country.
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c.d.embrey said:
Yep, so do I, at least quite frequently. Assuming that you are not compensating for something like strong highlight or strong shadow you can't beat nailing the exposure onto the sensor in the correct place if you want maximum IQ. The whole ETTR thing is mostly a myth brought about by people shooting zero data ( lens caps on for instance ) and then analysing it at 200% which has zero relevance to a normal picture.
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The comics haven't made their way to the US, but I remember them from my time in Europe. Thanks for the funny memory. Also, I understand and I'm so happy to see that Canon is moving the indicator to the side in the 7DII. I love it there in my 1D X and hope that's the future direction for all x0D and above bodies.Marsu42 said:mackguyver said:
Right, good point there
And in full M mode even looking at the camera's metering, you still have to think more when bringing the little green pointer to the center line.
Because you noticed, you're getting the "Schlaubi Schlumpf" (smart smurf) award of the thread :-> ... I don't know know if these popular comics have made their way over the great lake to marvel's superhero country.
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I shot a few hundred shots at a friend's stage event the other day, and... the camera's metering didn't fare too well, to say the least. The meter was consistently pegged so hard to the left that I stopped even bothering to look at it.
Initially, I tried to use exposure compensation in evaluative mode, to see if that would be usable on the 6D. Unfortunately, that was too inconsistent, and even with the exposure compensation cranked to the left as far as it would go, shots were still occasionally blown out, so I gave up and used full manual mode, with chimping on every single shot. I would have killed for a usable Tv mode, because manually switching ISO settings and exposure times depending on whether I wanted to get motion blur or not is kind of a pain in the backside... but Tv just wasn't to be.
The problem is that when doing stage photography, all of the autofocus points are likely to be in focus, because you're shooting at or beyond infinity the whole time. So Canon's evaluative metering tries to take into account the spot metering values for every single focus point, thus dutifully providing amazing contrast on the flat black stage background, while simultaneously ensuring that every single face is consistently blown out beyond recognition. This is clearly not desirable behavior.
By now, I would have expected the evaluative metering system to recognize that, "Hey, there's no significant contrast near any of the in-focus areas except for the chosen AF point, and that spot is going to be massively blown out if I meter it this way," and then adjust its expectations (and its light meter readings) accordingly. Unfortunately, Canon's AF system doesn't do this.
Of course, the problem is made worse by the lack of a spot-focus-follows-manually-chosen-AF-point mode, of course, but even if I had that, I'd still probably be swearing at it a lot. There simply has to be a more sensible way to meter scenes like this.
Alternatively, give us a sensor with massively larger full well capacity—say 24 stops of dynamic range at high ISO—and I'll stop caring about the metering so much. I'm not holding my breath for that one, though, as it probably won't happen until we get a proper global electronic shutter and can sum multiple successive samplings to produce the final image....
Initially, I tried to use exposure compensation in evaluative mode, to see if that would be usable on the 6D. Unfortunately, that was too inconsistent, and even with the exposure compensation cranked to the left as far as it would go, shots were still occasionally blown out, so I gave up and used full manual mode, with chimping on every single shot. I would have killed for a usable Tv mode, because manually switching ISO settings and exposure times depending on whether I wanted to get motion blur or not is kind of a pain in the backside... but Tv just wasn't to be.
The problem is that when doing stage photography, all of the autofocus points are likely to be in focus, because you're shooting at or beyond infinity the whole time. So Canon's evaluative metering tries to take into account the spot metering values for every single focus point, thus dutifully providing amazing contrast on the flat black stage background, while simultaneously ensuring that every single face is consistently blown out beyond recognition. This is clearly not desirable behavior.
By now, I would have expected the evaluative metering system to recognize that, "Hey, there's no significant contrast near any of the in-focus areas except for the chosen AF point, and that spot is going to be massively blown out if I meter it this way," and then adjust its expectations (and its light meter readings) accordingly. Unfortunately, Canon's AF system doesn't do this.
Of course, the problem is made worse by the lack of a spot-focus-follows-manually-chosen-AF-point mode, of course, but even if I had that, I'd still probably be swearing at it a lot. There simply has to be a more sensible way to meter scenes like this.
Alternatively, give us a sensor with massively larger full well capacity—say 24 stops of dynamic range at high ISO—and I'll stop caring about the metering so much. I'm not holding my breath for that one, though, as it probably won't happen until we get a proper global electronic shutter and can sum multiple successive samplings to produce the final image....
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well most of the time its manual with eval, i shoot and check, over/under expose then shoot and check, until i am satisfied, i do that for the first shots then keep it until i see a change in the light - close to sunset/sunrise - however for birds i read spot is better than eval so I spot and crop, yes no recompose as i am reach limited anyway and will crop so why the bother, i only learned about ML AETTR recently so still don't know if it will be good for me, but with dual ISO i think its better to underexpose and PP.
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80% of the time it's "spot-linked AF", but sometimes when things move very fast and has a very contrasty color/brightness to the surroundings, I found evaluative works better in those cases. My camera is also preset with a +7/8 offset permanently.
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