What is Metering mode?
This question I always had. I also read in various forum that its very important as well. The reason this is important, well for me: with shuffling from one setting to other made a difference. Significant difference !
The point is not to find fault with any metering, the point is which one to use in different lightning conditions.
I have a thumb rule kind of listing that I keep in mind:
1. Average metering aka Pattern in landscape photography, or with conditions where light is uniform.
2. Center Weighted in picture with a subject and tricky photography. This might be tried more in portrait mode.
3. Spot for Marco and when subject is in tricky lighting conditions. Shadows and highlights, total dark with light source etc. The essential requirement is "subject" of course.
I am listing my experiments with Metering mode here. Well, the reason to choose a dark night and a illuminated building as a subject...just thought I have not reached a stage where I can experiment with colours.
All the following photos are taken in Aperture priority mode. Notice the subtle details in regions close to the camera, not illuminated by the building. (The building was way to away)
For Spot metering, I intentionally 'pointed' to a 'close to light source' part of the building. I wanted to avoid directly pointing to the light source as this would have resulted in totally black image !
This is shot with Spot mode, notice that the details close to camera are gone.
This is shot with Center Weighted - Average, this looks very close to the one below, but little bit under exposed than below.
This is shot with Pattern. The result is close to what I wanted. This is a bit more exposed as well with subtle details emerging.
Pattern is recommended by Panasonic, I guess it will work better with weird cases, like the one I took...darkness + light source
I will prefer to shuffle between these 3 if I want to make sure that my subject and other highlights are properly included.
Instead of merging 3 different exposed images (Exposure bracketing), I will experiment more on these lines. I think the texture of image will be more subtle with this approach. Will post the combined image in next blog.
In the mean while, this is what Panasonic FZ28 Manual, page 84 recommends:
For details on [REC] mode menu settings, refer to P22.
Type of optical measurement to measure brightness can be changed.
Applicable modes:
[C]:Multiple
This is the method in which the camera measures the most
suitable exposure by judging the allocation of brightness on the
whole screen automatically.
Usually, we recommend using this
method.[]:Center weighted
This is the method used to focus on the subject on the center
of the screen and measure the whole screen evenly.
[Ù]:Spot
This is the method to measure the subject in the spot metering
target .
Here are the example during daylight.
The example is with a tricky situation. The squirrel is in the tree, and there is mixed lightning, shadows and light. I realized that central weighted will not work properly in this case, the subject might not be correctly exposed.
Spot, the most correctly exposed one according to me:
Center weighted, not correctly exposed. Actually I didnt expect that it will do so badly. I will not entirely rule out Center weighted.
Multiple, or Average. The result is not satisfactory, as my subject got underexposed.
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