Metering Techniques

There has been a bit of discussion over various metering pronlems, so I'm starting a thread where we can offer our own techniques. Maybe some good bits of information will come out of it.

My metering technique is very, very simple.

I generally use Av, set the aperture I want to control depth of field or indeed to give me the shutter speed I need.

Use matrix or cenre-weighted metering depending on the camera and use the exposure compensation dial to adjust the esposure according to the scene.

The tricky bit will be judging how much compensation, if any, but that's just a matter of practice. With digital, you can see the effect straight away anyway, so the learning curve will be much faster than it ever was with film.

Behind this is a very simple use of the Zone System. A 18% grey is Zone 5 and the meter will measure everything on that basis. Point at a white wall and it will make it Zone 5, grey. So if I want a touch of detail in a white wall then that is Zone 8 and it needs 3 stops more exposure to get that.

Point at a black cat and that can be Zone 2, so we need three stops less exposure.

This gives us a 6 stop range, which our digital cameras can just about tolerate. So in practice the exposure can be clipped a little at either end if necessary, but for digital, like slide film, over-exposure is the killer to I would shy short of 3 stops in my example and adjust afterwards in PS.

The result of this is correct exposure 99% of the time, the 1% being human error and carelessness....

And if you use RAW capture you get another +/- 3 stops latitude which probably iliminates the remaining 1%.

So, it's perfect shots every time then . . . and no excuses

in order:

I prefer to use a handheld incident meter.
Spot meter in camera.
(For both I meter for highlights, then shadows, to decide the tonal range. then set exposure for the brightest highlight area I want detial in (software or added light or reflectors to save the shadows)).

matrix metering for fast shooting. (agian metering for the highlights locking and recomposing, or adjusting exp comp for tough light situations.)

Bottom line?
slides = digital in the sense that if you blow the highlights, there's nothing you can do to save the shot.