Metering setting

BF Hammer

BF Hammer

Senior Member
I have already watched it and thought it was quite the coincidence he dropped that while there was discussion about my heron photo yesterday. :D

I did remember that was a metering option on Z bodies (oops, it's there on my D750 also) and always believed it was a spot mode. But Steve says it is a more intelligent matrix mode. I will experiment in the future. But I think this would be limited more to nature photos and could tend to underexpose other photos. Definitely want to be shooting Raw images to be able to handle recovering the shadows when the algorithm kicks in and underexposes for the white spots.
 
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Woodyg3

Woodyg3

Senior Member
Contributor
I'm so used to using exposure compensation that I don't know if I would ever remember to use this feature. I can see it would be helpful in certain situations. No matter, it's not available on my camera bodies :)
 
S

Sandpatch

Senior Member
I struggle with the metering settings on my unsophisticated D5100 and have settled in with Matrix as being the best, but it still fails me at times. With my favorite subject being trains, locomotives have extremely bright headlights and regardless of setting, the camera then closes the aperture and my pictures often come out dark. I can't do auto-bracketing or manually set the Stop because a train is a moving object and there's a, brief and optimum composition as it passes by. The lighting composition changes drastically when a dark locomotive with a bright headlight fills the viewfinder. Maybe I could add 1/3 stop on my shots just to test.
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Oddly, I rarely had this problem when I shot Plus-X, Tri-X and Kodachrome films with my N2020, EL-2 or Nikkormat FTn.

Any ideas are welcome!
 
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BF Hammer

BF Hammer

Senior Member
Sandpatch said:
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Oddly, I rarely had this problem when I shot Plus-X, Tri-X and Kodachrome films with my N2020, EL-2 or Nikkormat FTn.

Any ideas are welcome!
Click to expand...
Film has a more forgiving dynamic range. Too dark is better than too light so you can boost the shadows processing a Raw image. Straight jpg, you would loose that shadow detail in the image compression.

Not that I would push this as the answer, but I can see where a Z5 or Z5-II would help. You can display the exposure histogram overlaid in viewfinder as you compose to dial in a difficult exposure rapidly.
 
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