Shooting for eBay: Creating Simple and Effective Product Shots for Online Auctions and Sales

Metering Modes

Digital cameras have different metering modes that control how the camera’s built-in light meter looks at the scene in front of the camera. The three basic metering modes each measure the light in a different way.

• Spot metering. When you use Spot metering, the camera only looks at a very small area of the whole scene and ignores the rest. This is really useful when shooting scenes with a lot of white or black in them that you want the camera to ignore. I recommend this mode often for product images, because they are often shot against a plain, white background. Some cameras tie the area used for Spot metering into the focus point selection so the camera only looks at the area that you are focusing on.

• Center Weighted metering. ...