Enrico Marega Interactive photography course
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The light meter and metering modes

The camera’s light meter has a flaw: it thinks everything is mid-grey. It works with normal scenes and gets it wrong with very bright or very dark ones. Knowing this is enough to correct it.

1Simulator

The light meter sees grey

Have the camera meter a black card, a grey one and a white one. See how it renders them.

2Simulator

Metering modes

Change the scene and the mode. With spot, tap the photo to choose the point to meter, then correct with compensation .

Mid-grey

1Simulator The light meter measures reflected light and brings it to a mid-grey, the famous 18%. In a normal scene, with lights and darks mixed together, the average really is a mid-grey and the photo comes out right.

1Simulator On a field of snow the average is white: the light meter darkens it down to grey and the photo comes out underexposed. On a black background the opposite happens.

2Simulator The solution is the exposure compensation you saw in lesson 4: +1 or +2 on snow, −1 or −2 on black. Or spot metering on a mid-tone area.

Metering modes, brand by brand

2Simulator The metering mode that looks at the whole scene is called matrix on Nikon, evaluative on Canon, multi on Sony and Fujifilm and multi-segment on Ricoh. Then there are centre-weighted (on Canon “centre-weighted average”) and spot, which they all have; Canon also has partial, a wider spot.

Nikon, Sony and Ricoh also have highlight-weighted metering: it protects the brightest areas from clipping and it’s handy in hard light, when you want the shadows to fall into black.

Key points

  • The light meter brings everything to mid-grey: snow and white walls come out dark, black backgrounds come out light.
  • Matrix (evaluative on Canon, multi on Sony and Fujifilm) for normal scenes, centre-weighted for portraits, spot for backlighting and strong contrast.
  • With spot, meter a mid-tone. Fair skin is about one stop brighter than grey: add +0.7 to +1.

Try it yourself

Photograph a sheet of white paper that fills the frame, with no compensation. Then do it again with compensation at +2. The first will be grey, the second almost white.

Post the result and tag me @enrico.marega, or send it to me by DM: I’d love to see how you tackled it.

Quick check

You photograph a person in the snow and the photo comes out dark. What do you do?
Portrait in front of a bright window: the face is black. Which metering mode helps?