I was hoping someone could give me some insight into this. When in aperture mode, the light meter doesn't show on the info screen by default. If I go into a severely underexposed composition, it'll pop up flashing; or if I pop up the onboard flash, it'll show as well. But in a moderately exposed no-flash shot, it doesn't show and I have no clue if I'm over/under exposed.
Is that Nikon 'saying' "you don't need the meter, I'm taking care of the shutter speed so your exposure will be juuuuust fine"? It'd be nice if the meter would show all the time.
Yes, the thing
is saying it can compensate at these light levels , in such a way ,that the meter will be reading middle value, and it feels that this is therefore uninformative. IMO , Learn using manual or Shutter priority , its far less confusing.
What you need to understand is that there , technically is no "correct" exposure , other than to say that there is enough signal to generate some sort of image. A black cat in a dark room is
supposed to be- not at center of the meter, because if the meter reads in center , then the image is that of a gray cat in a gray room. If you take a picture of white snow with a polar bear , and the meter reads at center , then you have a gray bear on gray snow.
If you take a picture of a small far off backlit bird against the bright blue sky, and the meter reads at center , then the sky is dimmed approaching a gray sky , and the bird is slightly less dark than a totally black dot, because proportionally the dark area it covers is much less of the total metered image, than the bright sky portion.
To help with this ,you can choose spot metering , which gives more emphasis to the thing you are focused on , in this case the bird , and the total exposure should be dimmed less ( by choosing a higher iso).
Whatever exposure method you use , you should check to see the result , overall, appears correct. You want to be collecting DATA in the form of a decent signal in an optimal fashion. But that line on the meter being at middle , is rarely ever optimal , because the subject and setting are rarely ever uniformly at 18% gray light level. Auto ISO works OK when the overall differences in Brightness of the scene you are imaging, is fairly uniform and of middling visual brightness.
After doing a photoshoot at F11 aperture in aperture mode , take a look at the exif data appended to each image , notice , that , while you thought you had selected f11 aperture , that the camera may have superseded your choice of aperture
as well as selected a variety of ISOs and shutter speeds. Trying to figure out what choices the camera will make with any given scene is far more confusing than just picking some standard values for aperture and ISO , and adjusting shutter speed to compensate. And even if you do use auto iso , thinking that this crutch is going to make things always look great..you are required to now choose exposure compensation values to counteract the decisions the camera is about to make! Auto controls of exposure , is really for those who
already understand what the camera will be doing , it's not really for those who wish to make sense of the input decisions which generate images.
If YOU choose a value , then at least you know what is being carried out when you push the button , and in short order ,you will get what is going on. If you use auto , or sports mode etc, then you will not be seeing the effects of the decisions you made -clearly.