The Digital Photography Book

When to Switch to Spot Metering

Most folks keep their camera’s metering mode set at their camera’s default setting, which is called Evaluative metering on Canons, Matrix metering on Nikons, or Multi-Metering on Sonys. That just means your camera looks at the entire frame and it tries to create an exposure that works for the entire image. These modes, on today’s cameras, do a pretty amazing job most of the time. However, sometimes tricky lighting situations will fool your camera’s regular metering. For example, if your subject is against a really bright background, it will fool your camera into making the scene darker, so your subject winds up ...