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K800i Metering mode: What's it for? |
aremaboy
Joined: Nov 27, 2004
Posts: > 500
From: Malang, Indonesia
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Anyone can explain what's it used for? It doesn't affect anything IMHO. Or Am I mistaken? My old K750 didn't have it and K800 is my first 'almost 100 % digicam-like' phone. Thanks. | |
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Lembo
Joined: Mar 13, 2004
Posts: > 500
From: East London
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Copied from Wikipedia
Spot Metering
An image taken with spot metering. Notice how the flame is correctly exposed, while the background has become completely black.With spot metering the camera will only take a tiny spot of the scene into account when calculating the exposure. This will typically be the very center of the scene, but some cameras allow the user to select a different, off-center spot, or to recompose by moving the camera after metering. Some cameras, including the Olympus OM-4 and Canon T90, support a Multi-Spot mode, allowing multiple spot meter readings to be taken of a scene, which are averaged. Both of those cameras, and others, also support metering of highlight and shadow areas.
Spot metering is useful when the scene consists of objects with varying brightness (high contrast). For example, if your subject's back is being hit by the rising sun and the face is a lot darker than the bright halo around their back and hairline. This is called being backlit. Spot metering allows the photographer to measure the light bouncing off of the subject's face and expose properly for that instead of the much brighter hairline and a dark face. The area around the subject's back and hairline will then become over-exposed, but this is usually considered a decent natural highlighting effect, or if that part is to be removed afterwards anyway, then the overexposure is not a problem either way.
Spot metering is a method upon which the zone system depends.
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eeperman
Joined: Jun 06, 2005
Posts: 44
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Simply put, in Normal mode the camera looks at the whole scene and sets an exposure level that it thinks will look best. In spot metering the camera just looks at the very middle of the screen and sets an exposure that will work for that area. As the previous poster suggests, this is very useful for backlit portraits were you want the subject to be correctly exposed at the expense of an overexposed background. | |
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Posted: 2006-08-11 22:16
