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Modern cameras have a variety of different metering modes. A lot of people, especially those new to photography, don’t really know how to get the most out of these modes. While the immediacy of digital capture and the sophistication of modern technology has made the process of getting accurate exposures easier, knowing how and what to meter comes in useful. Let’s look at the various common metering modes.

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Spot Meter

When you need to take a reading off a very small area, spot metering is the way to go. I use this all the time when shooting live music or portraits so that I can ensure that the subjects face is correctly exposed. The spot typically covers an area of 2-3% of the frame, and is used when you don’t want any of the background light to affect the metering. If you take a number of readings from various parts of the image and compare the differences between shadow and highlight areas, you can achieve very accurate readings in tricky light.

Multi-Segment

Canon calls this Evaluative and Nikon calls it Matrix, but it’s essentially the same thing and is usually the default metering mode on DSLRs. The image frame is divided into sections which are measured separately and then compared against a database of thousands of lighting scenarios in order to determine an accurate exposure. This all happens pretty much instantly.

Center-weighted

This mode measures the entire image frame but gives a greater priority to the central areas and lesser importance to the edges. It works well for evenly lit scenes where the subject is centrally located but areas of brightness or darkness can fool the meter, particularly when they are near the center.

Partial Metering

This mode is usually found on Canon cameras only. It works pretty much the same way as spot metering but the area measured is around 10-15% of the frame, leading some to refer to it as “big spot”.

Next time you’re photographing subjects in difficult light, try a few different metering modes to see what works best.

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