# Spot metering difficulty



## oldnewandblue (Dec 7, 2011)

Hi all, new on here.. I have been shooting on evaluative metering mode on my 5d mk1 for sometime now, but I want to use the spot metering mode. I understand that it covers about 3% of the centre, but I find it really hard to set the exposure (shooting manual of course) because the metering is so sensitive ... Anyone got any tips on this ?? Many thanks xx


----------



## Ysarex (Dec 7, 2011)

Put the camera into one of its semi-auto modes like P, Tv or Av.

Joe


----------



## Robin Usagani (Dec 7, 2011)

I dont advise using spot with semi auto.  Your exposures will jump and down quite a bit between shots.



Ysarex said:


> Put the camera into one of its semi-auto modes like P, Tv or Av.
> 
> Joe




Of course it is sensitive, it is only pointing a little spot.  You can be on someones hair, forehead, sky etc.   The key is to know where to put the exposure of what you are metering.  For example if I shoot a bride, I probably point it at the bright spot of her dress and put it at +2 or +1 2/3.  Or I can point at the forehead and put it at 0 (assuming her skin isnt dark or fair).


----------



## oldnewandblue (Dec 7, 2011)

Thanks guys .. @ joe.. I don't shoot on semi auto. If I did, I probably wouldn't be interested in shooting with spot.@schwetty...  Yup I get this.. But in the time that I compose, meter, & change the +/- etc, the subject will have moved, or I will have moved, and it's too late! I was just wondering if there is a secret to doing this fast enough to overcome the sensitivity.. Or is it enough to stay @ 9% with evaluative. Never had problems there, but with improving my skill in mind, I hoped to master 'the sport'. Also, schwetty, I take it your a wedding photographer.. Would youind if I asked you a post production/presentation question? Xx


----------



## Robin Usagani (Dec 7, 2011)

sure ... I dont mind.

You want to point something that is big and it is OK if you arent accurate.  RAW is very forgiving.  As long as you are as close as 1 stop or sometimes more, you are fine.  More than likely if you point it at the skin and set it to 0, your photo will be workable.  Just dont point it at the shiney part of the forehead or something.


----------



## pgriz (Dec 7, 2011)

Well, use the spot meter as a probe. Ideally, you should point it at the brightest spot where you want to see detail and get a reading. Say it is 1/1000sec at f/8 at ISO 200. Then you see what the darkest spot reads. Say it is 1/4 sec at f/8 at ISO 200. That means that the lightest and darkest parts of your image are about 8 stops apart. Now meter something in the scene that is at the midpoint of brightness. It might be 1/125sec at f/8 at ISO 200. Chances are, if you go to evaluative metering for this scene, you'll get something close to 1/125sec (f/8, ISO 200). Now you know that your highlight is about 3 stops above the midpoint, and your detailed shadows are 5 stops below the midpoint. For most DSLR cameras, the image will be within the dynamic range of the camera, and you will get detail in both the highlights and the shadows. 

However, suppose the highlight read at 1/4000 sec, everything else being equal (ie, two stops brighter). Now, your camera may not be able to extract detail in the highlights as they risk being "blown". So as a photographer, you make the decision about what is more important to you - the highlight detail or the shadow detail, and bias your exposure accordingly. It should also be clear that the exposure will be set manually because you are overriding the reading that the camera makes and you set an intelligently-derived exposure that will give you the photo you want.

The exception to the above is when the point of interest is very small (relative to the size of the frame), and the exposure of that point of interest has to be right - then I will go with the camera's reading on that spot. An example of this would be shooting a performer on stage, lit by bright floodlights, but surrounded by black (or very dark) background. The spot reading on his/her face would give me a much better exposure reading than an "evaluative" or averaging reading. The same applies if you are shooting a person surrounded by very bright background (snow or sand), and the averaging exposure will usually drastically underexpose the person.


----------



## Derrel (Dec 7, 2011)

^^^^^^^EXCELLENT post, pgriz!!!


----------



## Ysarex (Dec 7, 2011)

You asked if there's a way to use the spot metering function and at the same time work fairly quickly....OK.

As Pgriz noted you can use the spot meter to measure the dynamic range of the scene. That means multiple readings and calculations and time. Nobody can do that quickly. So if you're trying to use the spot meter in that manner then your question doesn't make sense.

How else can a spot meter be useful? You can use it to determine the exposure from a point in the photo where you have assessed -- based on your extensive experience -- there is a middle grey. If you're thinking about spot reading off something other than a middle grey then you're back to calculations and working slow -- you could possibly plan to meter off skin tones that are typically one stop brighter than middle grey and if so dial in an appropriate EC.

So, one precise reading and then recompose and click. How to do that as fast as possible? I would have earlier set an ISO that I had assessed was appropriate to the general illumination level. Then I'd place the camera in Tv or Av mode based on my preference for the circumstance (fast shutter hand held for example). Ready to go in TV mode:

1. Assess the scene and find the meter spot.
2. Place meter zone over spot.
3. Press AEL button on camera while verifying camera selected f/stop.
   (Once AEL button pressed no jumping of exposure will take place.)
4. Recompose.
5. Click.

That would be the fastest possible way to do that in a way that makes sense. Otherwise you could put the camera in M and work more slowly.

Joe


----------



## MLeeK (Dec 7, 2011)

Sending you something to help...


----------



## Robin Usagani (Dec 7, 2011)

There are many ways to do it i guess, AEL is one of them.  Unfortunately some canon cameras you cant lock it for several shots.  Not sure if my 5D II can lock it for multiple frames.  I havent tried.  

I like matching spot metering to where I think it should be.  For example if I want the blue sky to be blue on my raw file, I just point it to the blue sky and set my meter to around +1, + 1 2/3.


----------



## Big Mike (Dec 7, 2011)

> Yup I get this.. But in the time that I compose, meter, & change the +/- etc, the subject will have moved, or I will have moved, and it's too late! I was just wondering if there is a secret to doing this fast enough to overcome the sensitivity..


One of the advantages of shooting in manual, is that your exposure won't change (unless you change it).  So as long as you're shooting in the same light, you only need to set your exposure once, and then you don't have to worry about exposure for subsequent shots (provided the light doesn't change and you want to maintain the exposure you've set).

So for example, you might look at your scene and choose something that you could guess the brightness of, for metering.  A common one is green grass or foliage...it's often very close to middle grey (middle grey, being what your camera's meter is calibrated for).  So you would meter on the grass, get to zero on your scale...and then recompose and start shooting, not having to worry about your exposure.  In this case, spot may not be ideal, because grass/foliage isn't uniform...so you want a larger sample size.

If you are going to use spot metering, it can be hand to pick part of your scene/subject and meter off of that.  Another example, if there is something white, you could meter off of that and set your exposure to roughly +2.  

So yes, your meter reading will jump around while in spot mode...but it's meant to be small so that you can meter off of something specific...and that's only useful if you understand where you want your exposure to be, relative to that post. (or if you want to analyze your scene, as mentioned above).

Of course, you could use a grey card to meter off of and set your exposure.  That's not usually as quick and easy as we would like...but once you set your exposure, you don't have to change it (unless the light changes etc.)


----------



## jwbryson1 (Dec 7, 2011)

pgriz said:


> Well, use the spot meter as a probe. Ideally, you should point it at the brightest spot where you want to see detail and get a reading. Say it is 1/1000sec at f/8 at ISO 200. Then you see what the darkest spot reads. Say it is 1/4 sec at f/8 at ISO 200. That means that the lightest and darkest parts of your image are about 8 stops apart. Now meter something in the scene that is at the midpoint of brightness. It might be 1/125sec at f/8 at ISO 200. Chances are, if you go to evaluative metering for this scene, you'll get something close to 1/125sec (f/8, ISO 200). Now you know that your highlight is about 3 stops above the midpoint, and your detailed shadows are 5 stops below the midpoint. For most DSLR cameras, the image will be within the dynamic range of the camera, and you will get detail in both the highlights and the shadows.
> 
> However, suppose the highlight read at 1/4000 sec, everything else being equal (ie, two stops brighter). Now, your camera may not be able to extract detail in the highlights as they risk being "blown". So as a photographer, you make the decision about what is more important to you - the highlight detail or the shadow detail, and bias your exposure accordingly. It should also be clear that the exposure will be set manually because you are overriding the reading that the camera makes and you set an intelligently-derived exposure that will give you the photo you want.
> 
> The exception to the above is when the point of interest is very small (relative to the size of the frame), and the exposure of that point of interest has to be right - then I will go with the camera's reading on that spot. An example of this would be shooting a performer on stage, lit by bright floodlights, but surrounded by black (or very dark) background. The spot reading on his/her face would give me a much better exposure reading than an "evaluative" or averaging reading. The same applies if you are shooting a person surrounded by very bright background (snow or sand), and the averaging exposure will usually drastically underexpose the person.



I truly understand all of this and find it to be a great post, but this is not the kind of thing that I can typically do quickly in my head and really utilize when I'm taking a shot.  I find myself having to stop and really think about what I am doing and I don't always get there.  What do I need to do to get to this frame of reference?  I guess keep shooting...

Good post.


----------



## Derrel (Dec 7, 2011)

jwbryson1 said:
			
		

> >>SNIP>>I truly understand all of this and find it to be a great post, but this is not the kind of thing that I can typically do quickly in my head and really utilize when I'm taking a shot.  I find myself having to stop and really think about what I am doing and I don't always get there.  What do I need to do to get to this frame of reference?  I guess keep shooting...
> 
> Good post.



"How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"

 "Practice,practice,practice!"

To an accomplished musician, pages and pages of complex, varied musical notes are instantly translatable, on the fly...   You will get there.  If you set your camera to SPOT metering and an AUTO-exposure mode, it will very quickly show you the suggested readings as you use it "as a probe", as pgriz suggested. I would say set the camera to SPOT metering and Av mode, and then watch the shutter speed suggestions shift as you aim first at the brightest important object in the scene, and then at the darkest important object in the scene. This measuring the brightest and darkest important objects is a method of exposure metering that goes back to the 1940's, with the first widespread adoption of exposure meters. If you do this type of light metering in landscape type shooting for say, one season, you'll soon be able to guesstimate exposures, and you will also be able to pick out the mid-tone value subjects pretty fast as well.


----------



## Robin Usagani (Dec 7, 2011)

what made you choose that font Derrel?


----------



## 2WheelPhoto (Dec 7, 2011)

Manual mode and a Sektonic L358 light meter arrived today from BHPHOTO, I need to unbox it and learn the thing.


----------



## pgriz (Dec 7, 2011)

Someone once told me:  "engage brain before opening mouth".  Very sound advice.  Equally applicable to photography, I would think, as in "engage brain before clicking shutter".  

We need to slow down, to reflect, to ponder, to sense below the superficial surface to the deeper truths.  Like slow cooking, which aims to reunite the act of food-making and eating with the communal teamwork that sustains the spirit while the food sustains the senses and the body, slow photography seeks to "see" beyond the obvious.  I deliberately take most of my photos on a tripod (granted, I'm not a sports or event photographer).  The process of identifying a scene, of framing it in the viewfinder, of selecting the appropriate lens and exposure, of checking the ambient light, etc., etc., etc., is deliberate in that I follow a sequence of steps with specific intent and with the aim not just of exposing an image, but to try and capture a feeling or an emotion.  Those who do other creative arts (writing, making music, constructing wood furniture, painting and so on), often start with an idea, or a fragment of a thought, which they then work on over time to flesh out and to build up into something that has meaning.  So why do we feel that we need to hurry the act of making a photograph?  The speed of the shutter is not an imperative to us as to the maximum amount of time we should be devoting to something.

Through the photo club that I belong to, I have been fortunate to see the work of, and talk to many very accomplished photographers.  They made me re-examine the way I approach photography because it was their preparation prior to the act of pressing the shutter, that revealed their attention to their craft, and to the superb understanding of the technicalities of their chosen medium.  One photographer is a street photographer who shattered my illusion that his was a reactive process.  No.  He researches the location, goes there often until he is part of the local scenery and is accepted by the locals, waits for the right moment (the right light, the right person, the right juxtaposition).  He told me that he'd never get the images without the preparation beforehand.  

@jwbryson1:  I've done photography for many years and have shot thousands of slides, pretty much all were properly exposed and properly focused because I learned to do that very early in the game. At a certain point, it becomes automatic.  And as Big Mike noted, you don't need to be doing this on each shot - only when the light conditions change.  If the conditions are stable, I work out the exposure range at the beginning, set it up manually, and then shoot until something changes.  If conditions are variable, then it's either aperture priority or shutter priority, depending on whether DOF or action-freezing is more important.  The point is to focus on the image, not the mechanics of making that image.


----------



## Derrel (Dec 7, 2011)

Schwettylens said:


> what made you choose that font Derrel?



I wrote that post in TextEdit, and then pasted it in...that was the font I was in...not really a conscious choice...


----------



## oldnewandblue (Dec 8, 2011)

Thanks all.. wow - totally overwhelmed by all your responces and sometimes pointyles yet interesting chit chat!  Im going to sit down and read all the responces carefully - I get it, I think i just have to learn to read my light better, and faster!


----------



## unpopular (Dec 8, 2011)

Try to stop thinking of exposure as something with specific outcomes, and start thinking of exposure as maximizing information where detail is needed, perhaps at the expense of where it is not.

You can place any region into any tonal zone by adjusting exposure. Whenever you dial in null with spot meter, that region will be rendered as middle grey, no matter if we see that region as highlights or shadows. Any region lighter than this metered region will be proportionately lighter. Any region that is darker than the metered region will be proportionately darker.

If the information you want is in the specular highlights, you could meter off this region. You could expose as the meter reads it, but you'd probably loose important detail is the shadows due to under exposure. Increasing exposure would cause the metered region to be lighter, and as a result more detail in the shadows becomes apparent. Stop up beyond the latitude of the camera, and you'll loose the detail you sought after in the hilights, but ample detail exists in the shadows.

By adjusting exposure you balance out how the scene is rendered based on what is most important to you.

Typically, what I do is I meter off the the brightest point in the scene and increase exposure by 4 3/4 EV, which is the outer limits of my camera's latitude, and adjust exposure in RAW processing. By doing this, I know I have captured the full range of the camera's capabilities while maximizing signal. I know that if there are any blocked up shadows (a very rare situation) the camera could not resolve them without blowing out highlights - since I've already metered off the brightest point and increased exposure to the outermost limits of it's abilities.

Being new to spot metering, I know that this concept might seem hard to wrap your head around, but as you get used to spot metering in manual mode it will very quickly make more sense.


----------



## jwbryson1 (Dec 8, 2011)

unpopular said:


> Typically, what I do is I meter off the the brightest point in the scene and increase exposure by 4 3/4 EV, which is the outer limits of my camera's latitude, and adjust exposure in RAW processing. By doing this, I know I have captured the full range of the camera's capabilities while maximizing signal. I know that if there are any blocked up shadows (a very rare situation) the camera could not resolve them without blowing out highlights - since I've already metered off the brightest point and increased exposure to the outermost limits of it's abilities.



Do I understand you correctly?  Are you saying you meter off of the brightest spot in the scene and then *increase *your exposure compensation by the maximum amount your camera allows, and then dial down the exposure in PP with Photoshop or LR3?  Don't all the photos look completely blown OOC?


----------



## unpopular (Dec 8, 2011)

Well, essentially, but I'm not using EC, rather doing it in manual exposure.

When they are initially imported into the processor, they are very, very "thin" with low contrast and saturation. But no, once they are processed with a curve they are fine with ample shadow detail. All the detail is "there" it's just pushed up against the right end of the histogram. The trick is to ensure that no part of the exposure is clipped.


----------



## jwbryson1 (Dec 8, 2011)

unpopular said:


> Well, essentially, but I'm not using EC, rather doing it in manual exposure.
> 
> When they are initially imported into the processor, they are very, very "thin" with low contrast and saturation. But no, once they are processed with a curve they are fine with ample shadow detail. All the detail is "there" it's just pushed up against the right end of the histogram. The trick is to ensure that no part of the exposure is clipped.



That's very interesting.  I've read somewhere that it's better to start out OVERexposed and adjust left than it is to start out underexposed and adjust right.  Adjusting right increases noise, at least that's what I have heard.

Does anybody else do this or is Unpopular completely NUTS???  :lmao:


----------



## unpopular (Dec 8, 2011)

When I started really concerning myself with how to expose under digital, I kind of approached it like b/w, metering off the shadows and processing for the highlights. But i quickly learned that without much care, you end up blowing the highlights.

If you meter off the darkest point in the image, where do you place it? You can go infinitely deep into shadows, buy the more exposure you provide for the shadows the closer to the upper end of the camera's latitude you'll end up until you blow out areas, which results in posterization and lost detail. 

So, as I said before, if I meter off the highlights I know that the entire camera's latitude is being utilized. If anything in the shadows are clipped, then there isn't anything I could do about it without clipping highlights.

Doing it this way though does make exposure more situational-based, making exposing for available light obsolete. If for example the brightest zone in a scene is rendering at Zone 6, the exposure is going to be much greater than if the lightest object is at Zone 9, even if the light source is similar. If the brightest object is colored, I'll often cut exposure to prevent channel clipping.

And no. I don't think most people do this.


----------



## Derrel (Dec 8, 2011)

And to think, all this time, I've been using the WAG method of exposure determination!!!!!!


----------



## unpopular (Dec 8, 2011)

±10 stop bracketing, ftw!


----------



## jwbryson1 (Dec 8, 2011)

Derrel said:


> And to think, all this time, I've been using the WAG method of exposure determination!!!!!!



Similar to the SWAG method, I assume...


----------



## pgriz (Dec 8, 2011)

unpopular said:


> Try to stop thinking of exposure as something with specific outcomes, and start thinking of exposure as maximizing information where detail is needed, perhaps at the expense of where it is not.
> 
> You can place any region into any tonal zone by adjusting exposure. Whenever you dial in null with spot meter, that region will be rendered as middle grey, no matter if we see that region as highlights or shadows. Any region lighter than this metered region will be proportionately lighter. Any region that is darker than the metered region will be proportionately darker.
> 
> ...



That's an intriguing approach.  I'm going to have to try it to see how it works for me.  Of course, this means that pretty much every image will have to be postprocessed to get the maximum retention of information and image quality.  Still, I really like the idea of placing the highlight with the detail at the highest point of the dynamic range.  Thank you for the thought - although I will now have to really check the dynamic range on my camera.


----------



## unpopular (Dec 8, 2011)

I'd place specular at the highest point, just below clipping, and not the lightest point with detail, otherwise you'll get posterization when you try to redistribute the information along the curve. It's very important that you push everything up to the very limits without anything going over.

Sometimes you can get away with cases where the specular is very small with no falloff, but generally you'll want to avoid clipping entirely.


----------



## pgriz (Dec 9, 2011)

I suppose this is effectively "exposing to the right".  On another forum I read a long thread on how to get proper exposure (in portraiture) by using the highlight (non-specular) on the person's face to fall on the 240 line on the histogram.  Time to experiment.


----------



## unpopular (Dec 9, 2011)

pgriz said:


> I suppose this is effectively "exposing to the right".



Yep! But there really is no need to clip, at least not in camera. So I am not sure what the purpose of exposing for diffuse and placing at 240 instead of exposing for specular at just below 255 (8-bit).

Maybe if the object is very, very reflective? Even then, I'd meter off the specular and if the rest is too dark just minimally increase exposure.


----------

