Mastering Camera Metering Modes

Good morning and welcome to a new video! If you've ever been frustrated taking photos because they turned out too dark or too bright and you couldn't figure out why, well this video is for you because we've all been there. and I don't think there's anything more frustrating than being disappointed by our photos. So in a previous video I shared about the settings I set first in any camera and the one that comes up and one that didn't really come up was metering. So today I want to shed a light on the metering modes and we will see which ones to use, in which circumstances and how you can nail your exposure every time even in manual mode. And make sure you watch until the end for the special bonus barometer you absolutely need to turn off if you don't want big surprises on the field. It's something that I couldn't figure out why. At one point, I was having weird results until I discovered that setting. If you don't know me, my name is Pierre T. Lambert. I'm a travel photographer and the creator of the 30-day method to create photos, a step-by-step method to develop your photographer's eyes and skills. I share photography tutorials and adventures on this channel, so subscribe to see the next one and let's get right into it. We have a very challenging topic ahead but let's try to keep it simple and make it enjoyable. Remember photography is all about capturing light so from that basis you will need to measure light in order to capture it properly in your camera. So if you're on a hybrid camera I want you to make sure that your device renders live what settings you're affecting. This is an option that's called live view display settings on Sony. On Panasonic it has a similar name, on Canon the same. What you want to make sure is that it is turned on so that you see the effects of your shutter speed, of your aperture and your ISO straight in camera. This will save you a lot of frustration. For example, if you're taking a photo, it's turning out too dark or too bright compared to what you were seeing at the back of the screen. This is why it happens. So make sure it is turned on so that when you're changing settings, so you instantly see the results at the back of your screen. Okay, now that we have this out of the way, let's go back to our explanation around... Metering the light. Simply put, metering allows today's cameras to assess the amount of light and determine the correct exposure without using a manual light meter. Something that you may have seen like old-school guys do with a little thing with a ball at the top. This is a light meter and it is built in our camera. The light meter measures the reflected light and then determines the exposure. The goal of our cameras is to follow a standard of exposing for what we call medium gray. It's 18% gray, you have a grayscale from all white to black and it's a light meter. and basically it's trying to hit 80%. So that's something you need to absolutely know and keep in mind because in a lot of circumstances especially if you're shooting in the snow or in extremely contrasted scenes the camera will try to expump for that medium gray in that frame and it's not always what you want. So this is why for example shots in the snow will come out way darker than you may think because the camera is trying to expose for that 18% gray. Now our camera has to decide exactly where it's going to measure the light on a frame okay and that's where the different measurements mode the metering modes come in place. We have a bunch of metering modes so you can grab your camera and look at them with me if you want. So the first one is going to be multi or evaluative. It's the most common one, the most used. It's by default in the cameras and if you want a quick hack on the Sony, if you press on the trash can, you will actually see an explanation of what it is. So it says measures the balance of light over the entire scene for normal shooting, which means it's going to take the whole frame and try to balance things to again hit that medium gray exposure and set the settings for that. okay? It's a great metering mode for everyday situations when I'm doing street photography. That's usually what I'm using unless I'm in special conditions and we'll talk about that in a second. The second metering mode that you have is going to be center. Center is going to give more weight to measuring light in the center of your image rather than on the side. It's great for example if I'm doing a portrait and I have my subject in the middle of the frame that allows to really measure the light. towards where the subject is, right? Could be also helpful if you have a scene where you want to expose for the middle of the frame, the sides are dark, so you actually don't want the camera to bump up the exposure for the dark side. You want it to really keep the measurement in the center. That's great for center compositions, but it doesn't always work in my opinion for me. The third one is going to be spot. What is spot measuring? Spot measuring is super tricky. It's something that used to be very helpful back in the days when I was doing portraits and weddings. and I used it a little bit, but especially as the technology changed, I lost interest in it. Let me explain. Spot gives you a little spot that will be either locked in the center of your frame, you can choose that, or it will follow your focus point, depending on what you want, or it can even on certain cameras be independent. Light will be measured exactly on that spot and nowhere else on your image. It sounds great in theory but in practice it can be extremely extremely disorientating. For example if you're taking a portrait of a person and you're moving just from a side of the face that's like lit up directly to a side that is dark you end up with a drastically different image. Or if you're moving your camera and suddenly you're pointing to the t-shirt instead of the face you will see your exposure it's just changing so drastically so i don't use that anymore it was helpful when i was doing backlit portrait at first so that i could really expose for the face i would prefer to use the center metering for that and keep my subject in the middle then we have something that sony calls entire screen average it may or may not be on your camera but basically it takes the brightness of the whole screen and tries to do something average for everything okay That's pretty self-explanatory. I don't use it. I don't really see the use in it, honestly. And the last one is going to be something that's a little creative. It's called highlight metering. And it's not present on all cameras. I actually don't see it very often. It allows you to expose only for the highlights in that image. That is extremely good if you're trying to do shadows, silhouettes. If you're doing street photography and I have very strong shadows, this is actually a mode I could switch to quickly, which will allow me to... straight in camera have those like very contrasted images with the harsh shadows very very helpful before we move on to what i use why don't you tell me in the comments what you use and if you like this video if it's helpful leave it a big like that way i will know and feel free to share new topics that you want me to cover in the future so this is what i use 99.99999% of the time i actually stay in the multi-metering mode which is the evaluative one why because nowadays I found that they're way better than they used to be where I had to really juggle between spot and Multi now I can just stay in multi and I kind of know what's happening in my scene What I will do is I will play with my exposure compensation when I'm in semi automatic modes Or if I'm shooting in manual with auto ISO, it allows me to compensate very quickly So if I want my image to be darker, I just bring that little meter towards the left towards minus 1 or minus 2 And if I wanted to provide it, I would go the other way. And that's why it's so important to have a live view of what you're doing, of all the settings in your camera. That way you can see instantly the results of changing that exposure compensation knob. that will make it faster. Now how do you nail your manual exposures using those light meters? Well it's very simple your light meter is going to be displayed on that little plus minus scale that you can see or sometimes it's just written plus minus 0.0 for example that will say that you're under exposed towards what the camera is reading or you're overexposed towards what is reading or what it thinks is a good exposure. So what do you have to do if you're trying to get your manual mode right? Well once you've set your shutter speed and your aperture you can just tweak the ISO until your marker comes to the 0,0 which means it's properly exposed. And if changing the ISO does not do the trick and you're getting them too high, well just play with your shutter speed and your aperture. Again find a shutter speed that will be a good balance so that you can freeze your subject if you want to. And this is how you do manual very easily. You just have to use the light meter that's in your camera and then you adapt to it. Remember choose your light meter first so you know what you're measuring exactly. And I promise you a bonus tip! If you've ever been in a situation, and I've had, especially with new cameras, where I don't understand why my scene is proper but suddenly when a subject moves in it gets way brighter and I take the photo and the same scene looks completely different as you can see on that image. I don't understand why the exposure changed. I didn't change any of my settings. This happens because manufacturers, since we have the subject detection, create a little setting which is called metering for face priority so it means that it will give priority to exposing for the face of the subject it's detecting rather than the scene and the meter that you've set up and this can be extremely confusing i've been in many situations where i'm like why is this so bright right maybe i just wanted to get a silhouette but suddenly it's detecting a face and it's making the face super bright and my background is blown out so disable it again be intentional about how you're shooting and if you're trying to bump up someone's face, just use your exposure compensation to do that. This will be a lot easier and give you more consistent results than leaving it up to the camera. I hope this is helpful. Let me know if you knew about that last setting in the comments. And now, watch this video to learn how to focus for sharp photos every time or this one for my most important camera settings. Don't forget to grab your free photography settings cheat sheet. That is down below in the description, it will save you time on the field. Now get out there, go shoot, try something different, try something new, I'll see you in the next one. Have a beautiful day!

So in a previous video I shared about the settings I set first in any camera and the one that comes up and one that didn't really come up was metering. So today I want to shed a light on the metering modes and we will see which ones to use, in which circumstances and how you can nail your exposure every time even in manual mode. And make sure you watch until the end for the special bonus barometer you absolutely need to turn off if you don't want big surprises on the field. It's something that I couldn't figure out why.

At one point, I was having weird results until I discovered that setting. If you don't know me, my name is Pierre T. Lambert. I'm a travel photographer and the creator of the 30-day method to create photos, a step-by-step method to develop your photographer's eyes and skills. I share photography tutorials and adventures on this channel, so subscribe to see the next one and let's get right into it. We have a very challenging topic ahead but let's try to keep it simple and make it enjoyable.

Remember photography is all about capturing light so from that basis you will need to measure light in order to capture it properly in your camera. So if you're on a hybrid camera I want you to make sure that your device renders live what settings you're affecting. This is an option that's called live view display settings on Sony.

On Panasonic it has a similar name, on Canon the same. What you want to make sure is that it is turned on so that you see the effects of your shutter speed, of your aperture and your ISO straight in camera. This will save you a lot of frustration.

For example, if you're taking a photo, it's turning out too dark or too bright compared to what you were seeing at the back of the screen. This is why it happens. So make sure it is turned on so that when you're changing settings, so you instantly see the results at the back of your screen. Okay, now that we have this out of the way, let's go back to our explanation around... Metering the light.

Simply put, metering allows today's cameras to assess the amount of light and determine the correct exposure without using a manual light meter. Something that you may have seen like old-school guys do with a little thing with a ball at the top. This is a light meter and it is built in our camera.

The light meter measures the reflected light and then determines the exposure. The goal of our cameras is to follow a standard of exposing for what we call medium gray. It's 18% gray, you have a grayscale from all white to black and it's a light meter. and basically it's trying to hit 80%.

So that's something you need to absolutely know and keep in mind because in a lot of circumstances especially if you're shooting in the snow or in extremely contrasted scenes the camera will try to expump for that medium gray in that frame and it's not always what you want. So this is why for example shots in the snow will come out way darker than you may think because the camera is trying to expose for that 18% gray. Now our camera has to decide exactly where it's going to measure the light on a frame okay and that's where the different measurements mode the metering modes come in place. We have a bunch of metering modes so you can grab your camera and look at them with me if you want. So the first one is going to be multi or evaluative.

It's the most common one, the most used. It's by default in the cameras and if you want a quick hack on the Sony, if you press on the trash can, you will actually see an explanation of what it is. So it says measures the balance of light over the entire scene for normal shooting, which means it's going to take the whole frame and try to balance things to again hit that medium gray exposure and set the settings for that. okay?

It's a great metering mode for everyday situations when I'm doing street photography. That's usually what I'm using unless I'm in special conditions and we'll talk about that in a second. The second metering mode that you have is going to be center. Center is going to give more weight to measuring light in the center of your image rather than on the side.

It's great for example if I'm doing a portrait and I have my subject in the middle of the frame that allows to really measure the light. towards where the subject is, right? Could be also helpful if you have a scene where you want to expose for the middle of the frame, the sides are dark, so you actually don't want the camera to bump up the exposure for the dark side. You want it to really keep the measurement in the center.

That's great for center compositions, but it doesn't always work in my opinion for me. The third one is going to be spot. What is spot measuring?

Spot measuring is super tricky. It's something that used to be very helpful back in the days when I was doing portraits and weddings. and I used it a little bit, but especially as the technology changed, I lost interest in it. Let me explain.

Spot gives you a little spot that will be either locked in the center of your frame, you can choose that, or it will follow your focus point, depending on what you want, or it can even on certain cameras be independent. Light will be measured exactly on that spot and nowhere else on your image. It sounds great in theory but in practice it can be extremely extremely disorientating.

For example if you're taking a portrait of a person and you're moving just from a side of the face that's like lit up directly to a side that is dark you end up with a drastically different image. Or if you're moving your camera and suddenly you're pointing to the t-shirt instead of the face you will see your exposure it's just changing so drastically so i don't use that anymore it was helpful when i was doing backlit portrait at first so that i could really expose for the face i would prefer to use the center metering for that and keep my subject in the middle then we have something that sony calls entire screen average it may or may not be on your camera but basically it takes the brightness of the whole screen and tries to do something average for everything okay That's pretty self-explanatory. I don't use it.

I don't really see the use in it, honestly. And the last one is going to be something that's a little creative. It's called highlight metering.

And it's not present on all cameras. I actually don't see it very often. It allows you to expose only for the highlights in that image. That is extremely good if you're trying to do shadows, silhouettes. If you're doing street photography and I have very strong shadows, this is actually a mode I could switch to quickly, which will allow me to...

straight in camera have those like very contrasted images with the harsh shadows very very helpful before we move on to what i use why don't you tell me in the comments what you use and if you like this video if it's helpful leave it a big like that way i will know and feel free to share new topics that you want me to cover in the future so this is what i use 99.99999% of the time i actually stay in the multi-metering mode which is the evaluative one why because nowadays I found that they're way better than they used to be where I had to really juggle between spot and Multi now I can just stay in multi and I kind of know what's happening in my scene What I will do is I will play with my exposure compensation when I'm in semi automatic modes Or if I'm shooting in manual with auto ISO, it allows me to compensate very quickly So if I want my image to be darker, I just bring that little meter towards the left towards minus 1 or minus 2 And if I wanted to provide it, I would go the other way. And that's why it's so important to have a live view of what you're doing, of all the settings in your camera. That way you can see instantly the results of changing that exposure compensation knob.

that will make it faster. Now how do you nail your manual exposures using those light meters? Well it's very simple your light meter is going to be displayed on that little plus minus scale that you can see or sometimes it's just written plus minus 0.0 for example that will say that you're under exposed towards what the camera is reading or you're overexposed towards what is reading or what it thinks is a good exposure.

So what do you have to do if you're trying to get your manual mode right? Well once you've set your shutter speed and your aperture you can just tweak the ISO until your marker comes to the 0,0 which means it's properly exposed. And if changing the ISO does not do the trick and you're getting them too high, well just play with your shutter speed and your aperture. Again find a shutter speed that will be a good balance so that you can freeze your subject if you want to. And this is how you do manual very easily.

You just have to use the light meter that's in your camera and then you adapt to it. Remember choose your light meter first so you know what you're measuring exactly. And I promise you a bonus tip!

If you've ever been in a situation, and I've had, especially with new cameras, where I don't understand why my scene is proper but suddenly when a subject moves in it gets way brighter and I take the photo and the same scene looks completely different as you can see on that image. I don't understand why the exposure changed. I didn't change any of my settings. This happens because manufacturers, since we have the subject detection, create a little setting which is called metering for face priority so it means that it will give priority to exposing for the face of the subject it's detecting rather than the scene and the meter that you've set up and this can be extremely confusing i've been in many situations where i'm like why is this so bright right maybe i just wanted to get a silhouette but suddenly it's detecting a face and it's making the face super bright and my background is blown out so disable it again be intentional about how you're shooting and if you're trying to bump up someone's face, just use your exposure compensation to do that.

This will be a lot easier and give you more consistent results than leaving it up to the camera. I hope this is helpful. Let me know if you knew about that last setting in the comments. And now, watch this video to learn how to focus for sharp photos every time or this one for my most important camera settings.

Don't forget to grab your free photography settings cheat sheet. That is down below in the description, it will save you time on the field. Now get out there, go shoot, try something different, try something new, I'll see you in the next one. Have a beautiful day!

Transcript for:Mastering Camera Metering Modes

Transcript for:
Mastering Camera Metering Modes