After several cheap ****s here by the newly-minted InTempus (RTharmesen,wasn't it?), the guy who proudly lists his "L-glass" lens collection and his ALien Bees ownership,along with his advocacy of the "Kwanonian" Photo Contest (Canon fanboy photo contest) in every,single post he does, I thought I'd address his concern about my statement about how I can rely on Nikon light metering.
In the early 1980's, Nikon developed a flash protocol for its cameras called "TTL flashmetering". Olympus and Nikon were the first to have this kind of through the lens flash metering. Canon eventually followed suit, years later.
After a successful TTL flash metering system was developed by Nikon, Nikon *invented* the concept of Matrix metering with the Nikon FA, which won the Japan Camera Gran Prix award in 1984 for the best camera design of the previous year. Nikon *invented* the idea of a computer-based, 30,000 image library contained within the camera, with an 8-bit computer that would divide the screen into areas, and would meter the areas and compute the exposure based on 30,000 actual photos that had been programmed into the metering.
Later, in the early 1990's, Nikon invented a system that incorporated Distance into the metering calculations, with the AF-D autofocus system. Canon followed suit,eventually.
Later, in the mid-1990's, Nikon invented a system that used 1,0005 segment Red-Green-Blue measurement of subject reflectance and subject color. Canon has struggled to figure out how to get around Nikon's patents for about 12 years; the newly announced Canon EOS 7D is the *first* Canon that is not color-blind.
See, the thing about Nikon is that they incorporated TTL flash measurement years ahead of Canon. Nikon is the 35mm SLR system choice on ALL NASA space flights, and has been since the 1960's. It's not Canon, and never has been. Nikon is the only camera company metering not just the reflectance value of light, but also the COLOR of the subject matter. Canon does not do that!
The Canon 20-30-40-50D ALL have trouble with fast,erratic, continuous action autofocusing, while the D300,D3 sries,D700 and even the little 3000 can ALL measure the COLOR of objects,and use that information to help tha AF system track human flesh tones, as well as objects on which the user manually selects the AF point, and then, the system,knowing the color of the object, can TRACK that color as it moves across the field of play, or across the field of the viewfinder. Yet another way that a metering system that measures color at 1,005 or 420 points (D3000), is better than a totally color-blind system that tries to make everything into pure 18% gray values.
Nikon has a system of light metering that is, quite simply, more advanced than other camera companies have offered, with a 3-D Color Matrix Metering system that helps with flash metering, ambient light metering, and now focus tracking, with the CAM 3500 AF module used in the newer D300-D3-D3x-D700 models. The ablity of the metering system to measure not just reflectivity, but the actual RGB values of objects in the scene allows a person to shoot complex scenes with a decent Nikon body with light metering that is less easily-fooled than a color-blind Canon light metering system.
And that is why I made the simple reference to shooting Nikons in Aperture priority mode--because like NASA on the Space Shuttle, or NASA on the moon in the 60's, Nikon's light metering system has been exceedingly advanced since the original F Photomic FTN light meter came out in 1968. 60/40 centerweighted, with a scribed 12mm circle with 60 percent of the emphasis clearly scribed on standard viewfinder screens, for 40+ years.
The actual practical value of having a color-aware,and not color-blind light metering system is something Canon touts in its literature for their upcoming 7D camera.
About Canon: Press Room > Press Release
"To complement the new AF system, the exposure metering system for the EOS 7D has been completely re-designed to take color information into account, another first for an EOS system. Canon's iFCL metering includes a 63-zone dual-layer metering sensor that reads both illumination and color for consistent results in all lighting conditions, keeping exposure levels stable from shot to shot, even as the light source changes."
Nikon *INVENTED* color-aware in-camera light metering in 1996,with the Nikon F5 professional body,and quickly migrated it down to lower-spec'd consumer models. The F5 won the Japan Camera Grand Prix prize as best camera design in 1997. Now, 13 years after Nikon first put a color-aware light meter into a camera, Canon has finally managed to figure out a way to measure color values while getting around Nikon's patented RGB measuring system that helps in determining both exposure and white balance readings with much better accuracy.
The Canon d-slr models have had a tendency in various auto modes to give erratic over-exposure in my eperience and in the experience of my Canon-using friends....normally good, but then the totally blown-out,grossly overexposed shot pops up, often I am convinced because large areas of the scene are mis-interpreted by a light metering system that can not tell a white wall from a large, black shadowed area.
The original question was what exposure mode do you shoot in: when shooting action, where subjects move from light to dark areas, like they do at a track and field or football stadium in the afternoons, my own,personal experience has been that the ability to measure COLOR of subjects, not just a dumb reflectance value that tries to make everything 18 percent gray, means that Nikon d-slrs can be shot in Aperture Priority automatic mode in Matrix metering,and give very reliable automatic exposure under rapidly-changing situations, simply because a large, dark toned-subject or shadowed area is correctly interpreted by Nikon metering. Nikon *invented* the matrix system in 1984,and have been perfecting it ever since; with the addition of Red Green Blue color measuring, it all adds up to automatic aperture-priority light metering "I can trust". Just like NASA trusts Nikon in the space program as its small camera of choice on every space flight since the Apollo days. Why isn't Canon the small camera choice of NASA?
It was 1996 when Nikon *invented* RGB color-aware metering. It has now been linked to Scene Recognition autofocus and AF tracking in the current D3-D300-D700 and D3000 models. And soon, next month the same 13-year-old Nikon technology will become, "another first for an EOS system."
). You will need a gray card then shoot in RAW. You can make WB adjustments later in Lightroom without loss of quality in your image.
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