METERING "OFF" os something.

[AMOMENT]

A very helpful member on here has been very patient with explaining alot to me. (you know who you are) Up until recently I had not really used my meter to assess whether or not my photo was going to be over or under exposed. Although I have been shooting very frequently for 6 months, (not that long) I never really paid attention to it. I became so familiar with the typical settings for most scenarios that I immediately went to those settings and only had to adjust minorly around them. I also have practiced taking a shot and looking at the histogram to give me a general idea of the light situation. I now have taken note of my meter and although I am aware of it, I still don't find it that useful.
Is this meter the same thing as my metering mode? How do they relate if at all? I tend to gravitate towards matrix metering and sometimes spot if my subject is backlighted. Correct? This very sweet person has mentioned "metering off" of something to which I have no clue what this means. I assumed that when I meter, so to speak, I depress my shutter at my target, observe my meter, make the adjustments if needed, and then shoot. Is this all there is to it?

Furthermore, a fellow photog. friend of mine consistantly uses manual focus even of children. I have not been remotely successful with this. She likes that she can control her pictures completley; as do I. I find that I have to use auto with active kids but I find my control in selcecting an auto focus point. Her pictures always come out much more intense. For instance, if there is a person holding an apple, she can manually focus it to the apple. When I try to manually focus an image, I tend to see my "shot" go in and out of focus but not necessarily the certain objects or parts of the picture. The whole picture is either in focus or out of focus.

 

[MLeeK]

If she can manually focus accurately I'd guess she is using a very narrow aperture because it's harder than hell to do. In most cases the only time you choose manual focus over auto is for macro photography.

Your metering mode is what how your meter is metering. If you are using evaluative metering it's weighing every pixel. If you are using center weighted average it's weighing every pixel and then making the ones in the center more important.
If you are using SPOT metering then it is only using the pixels within the center spot.

Metering off of something is when you choose something to meter. Something that you roughly know you would like to be the mid tone on a light and dark scale. For example skin. If you meter white skin like your little one the meter will try to make 0 which would be the mid tone. HOWEVER white skin is much brighter than mid. Now that you know that, if you put your spot on the baby's cheek, read the meter and make it hit about +1 you would have correct exposure.

I think I have a link or a tutorial I can send you. Let me see if I can find the link.

 

[KmH]

What you said in your post leads me to think you have never read your camera's user's manual.

Have you? After 6 months you should have read it completely 4 or 5 times and always have it handy for quick reference.

Perhaps invest in the inexpensive ($15) book Understanding Exposure, 3rd Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera

 

[Derrel]

Metering "off of" something has long been called "substitution metering". It's quite a valuable method to understand and to know how to perform. For example, imagine a shot of a political candidate at a podium, 50 meters from your camera position. If the candidate has the same skin color as you do, you can use your own hand, metered close-up, in similar lighting, and can meter the right exposure by "metering off of your own hand".

Many times when backlighting is very strong, and especially when using a wide-angle lens, the sky can overly and unduly influence the light meter reading, so a popular old method was to aim the camera downward, and meter off of green grass.

One thing to keep in mind is that modern Nikon's all have RGB color metering, and can measure both the reflectance value of an object AND also its color, as determined by the RGB Color aspect of NIkon light metering. MOST other cameras and virtually all external light meters are "dumb", or "color-blind", and can only measure the reflectance value of an object. The newest Nikon cameras realize when they are metering "off of" gray concrete, jet black asphalt, or green seawater, and will give the right exposure for ALL THREE subjects. My Canon 5D on the other hand, is dumb as a post, and will take green seawater and lighten the chit out of it, and ruin photos that a dumb, el-cheapo, 6-year-old NIkon D70 can nail, exposure wise...this difference is one of the single largest problems that exists with either old books, or old-line workers who are used to light meters, both in-camera, and hand-held, that are calibrated for roughly an 18% reflectance value...they will tell you to over-expose the whites and under-expose dark objects. Which is right--IF YOUR METER IS COLOR-BLIND.

On another forum, a VERY experienced shooter had been using his Nikon D300 and using a variation of what is called the Modified Zone System, and was OVER-exposing his whites and light colors, and under-exposing his darks and blacks, as one WOULD AND SHOULD do when using a dumb, color-blind light meter. He opinied that the D300's light meter was very inaccurate, and lamented the fact that he had to bracket, extensively, to get the exposures right....he felt pretty dumb when I told him that he was second-guessing meter reading that were ALREADY adjusted for the COLOR of the subjects!!!!

 

[unpopular]

Are you saying that if you point a camera at the shadows, and just snap away, the camera will automatically know what tonal range to place that value in?

I'm not really sure I'd like that... like AT ALL.

 

[Derrel]

Are you saying that if you point a camera at the shadows, and just snap away, the camera will automatically know what tonal range to place that value in?

I'm not really sure I'd like that... like AT ALL.

More or less. DO you want a camera that cannot tell a large expanse of white sand beach, gray sandy beach, or green sea water apart? That's what my Canon 5D does when confronted with simple scenes in marine environments....it manages to eff up some dead-simple scenes that my Nikons have been able to nail for years....

 

[tevo]

half the status is lower case.. its a start.

 

[gsgary]

Are you saying that if you point a camera at the shadows, and just snap away, the camera will automatically know what tonal range to place that value in?

I'm not really sure I'd like that... like AT ALL.

More or less. DO you want a camera that cannot tell a large expanse of white sand beach, gray sandy beach, or green sea water apart? That's what my Canon 5D does when confronted with simple scenes in marine environments....it manages to eff up some dead-simple scenes that my Nikons have been able to nail for years....

I don't have that problem with my 5d

 

[analog.universe]

The metering stuff seems to have been covered, but I will make a comment about manual focusing.

I tend to prefer focusing manually whenever possible, and my most used lenses do not even have autofocus (I decided to invest in the best optics I could afford and sacrifice the electronics). At f/1.4 or 1.8, I find it very difficult to get the autofocus to lock onto say, an eyeball, instead of the lashes in front of it, for example. Situations where a half an inch makes a difference, it's faster for me to set focus by hand, than to try and get the autofocus to find the exact point that I want it to. I still use autofocus if the subject is moving faster than I can keep with (which is getting more and more rare with practice), or if my field is deep enough that I have some breathing room and just want to get the shot quickly. Sometimes even in scenes with deep field though, I prefer focusing manually because I may not want to put the focal plane on a single object in the scene. For example, if I'm taking an environmental style portrait at f/5.6 or 8, I may focus slightly in front of the subject to get more of the foreground in focus. Just like manual anything else, manual focusing gives you more options, but is less convenient. It is way easier if you upgrade your focusing screen however. The ones that ship in most digital cameras are just designed to be bright and cheap, there are some available that make focusing very obvious and simple (by using microprisms, split prisms, and coarser mattes).

 

[enzodm]

Furthermore, a fellow photog. friend of mine consistantly uses manual focus even of children.

If I remember well from some other posts from you, you have another friend that always use autofocus and perhaps also automatic focus point selections, and both take pictures you are envy of.
This tells the whole story: there is not an unique receipt. Learn (you have two good books suggestions above: the manual and the classic ) and practice, trying to understand which is your best way to take a picture that finally satisfies yourself. How did you take it, well, who cares?

 

[MTVision]

Is this meter the same thing as my metering mode? How do they relate if at all? I tend to gravitate towards matrix metering and sometimes spot if my subject is backlighted. Correct? This very sweet person has mentioned "metering off" of something to which I have no clue what this means. I assumed that when I meter, so to speak, I depress my shutter at my target, observe my meter, make the adjustments if needed, and then shoot. Is this all there is to it?

Furthermore, a fellow photog. friend of mine consistantly uses manual focus even of children. I have not been remotely successful with this. She likes that she can control her pictures completley; as do I. I find that I have to use auto with active kids but I find my control in selcecting an auto focus point. Her pictures always come out much more intense. For instance, if there is a person holding an apple, she can manually focus it to the apple. When I try to manually focus an image, I tend to see my "shot" go in and out of focus but not necessarily the certain objects or parts of the picture. The whole picture is either in focus or out of focus.

About your friend - I can use autofocus to get an image like your talking about. I can focus on an apple and have the apple in focus but not the person. You can as well you just have to focus on just the apple (or whatever it is) and have your aperture wide enough (assuming). I took a picture last night where the person has their hand out in front of them - the hand is in focus but not the apple. I shot it at f/2.2. I wouldn't worry what your friends are doing - take their advice/opinions and then do what works for you. You have one friend who uses autofocus and one who shoots manually - try them both and use what you like.

 

[unpopular]

Are you saying that if you point a camera at the shadows, and just snap away, the camera will automatically know what tonal range to place that value in?

I'm not really sure I'd like that... like AT ALL.

More or less. DO you want a camera that cannot tell a large expanse of white sand beach, gray sandy beach, or green sea water apart? That's what my Canon 5D does when confronted with simple scenes in marine environments....it manages to eff up some dead-simple scenes that my Nikons have been able to nail for years....

I'd rather tell the camera how i'd want the scene to be rendered, with appreciation for it's limitations - the way photographers have been doing it for almost 100 years now. If the Nikon spot meter could pinpoint and report the aprox. RAW level of a given subject at any given exposure, then that would be cool (well, super awesome, actually).

What if I want the sand to be nearly black to bring out the hilights of the rocks? How would I know how far to stop down if the meter is saying "yep, it's right" how would I predict what zone the hilights will fall in when teh meter is saying "two stops off the 'correct' exposure" - whatever 'correct' is.

I mean. I'm not saying that this would be an issue, it's just such a far departure from the last 150 years I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm also not seeing how RGB metering would solve the problem when traditional meters are pretty darn panchromatic, and can actually see more color than any composite system ever could - even if it can't distinguish between the two. RGB Metering might prevent blown channels, and could compensate effectively for color temperature, but I think, and I could be wrong, that this is a matter of software analysis, not hardware.

Are we talking spot metering, or area metering or both?

 

[Helen B]

One thing to keep in mind is that modern Nikon's all have RGB color metering, and can measure both the reflectance value of an object AND also its color, as determined by the RGB Color aspect of NIkon light metering. MOST other cameras and virtually all external light meters are "dumb", or "color-blind", and can only measure the reflectance value of an object. The newest Nikon cameras realize when they are metering "off of" gray concrete, jet black asphalt, or green seawater, and will give the right exposure for ALL THREE subjects.

That's rather odd, and quite magical. My humble D3 doesn't seem to know whether it is metering off black, grey or white - it gives different readings for all three and tries to make them all grey. How can it measure reflectance without measuring the light falling on the surface (which it does not measure). Are you confused between reflectance (or luminance) and spectral response? No TTL camera meter measures reflectance - they measure luminance.

Thanks,
Puzzled of New York

 

[unpopular]

Thanks Helen for your eloquent reply, I didn't want to question in case I was wrong, but I also was pretty puzzled by this assertion...

 

[AMOMENT]

Wow, I have so much more to learn and there is clearly not enough hours in the day! I, LOL, not only read my manual but TOOK NOTES. (yeah, I'm that dork) I understand where me meter is and how to interpret it but the manual doesn't explain how to meter off of something as a basis for taking a specific shot.
So, essentially what you're saying (some of you) is that if your camera is not color blind or is "smart" enough, then there is no reason to use a sample to readjust a shot that you are trying to get?
If I point my camera at something, observe the meter, I "lock" that meter by depressing the shutter button halfway correct? I then simply move my camera while keeping my finger depressing the shutter, and snp at my target. By doing this and using the sample that I metered off of, I can adjust my lighting and color in my photos.