Metering

Picture Perfect Photography: Metering

by Candice Stringham

Appeared In: June 2007

Here's what your shot might look like without metering close.

Learning to think like your camera’s meter
The way your camera sees things is completely different than the way the human eye sees things. As we look at the world, our eyes are able to balance light and dark. The human mind also has a great ability to edit things quickly pulling out the important information from a complex scene. Our cameras don’t work that way. I’m sure we’ve all had moments when we got our pictures back only to be disappointed that our photographs don’t look exactly the way we remember them.

Usually this is because of the meter in our camera. Metering determines how your camera adjusts for lighting with the shutter speed and aperture. So to get great photographs you have to learn how your camera’s meter works. Here is a simple explanation:

Learning how to meter:
One of the most important things to learn about your camera is how it meters light. Most cameras take an overall reading and set the exposure for a middle-grey (meaning that they meter everything in the picture and average it).

Example 1: If you were taking a picture of a child with the sun shining brightly behind them, the camera will read all the light, and when you get your picture back the sky will be pretty and your child’s face will be dark.

Example 2: Snow. Have you ever taken a picture of a beautiful snowy day just to get it back and see that it is blue-grey instead of white? That’s because it took the average, which we know would be white and made it middle-grey.

There are several ways to get past this. The main one is to move in closer to your subject. Get closer and cut out the bright sky. If you don’t want to do that, then meter closer. Move in. Hold down the button and take note of what your camera is telling you. Set your camera to those settings and move back. Your camera is going to tell you that the exposure is wrong, but it’s not. Try it! You’ll see the results will be beautiful.

The same shot after metering close and then changing the settings.

A few cameras have weighted metering sensors or spot metering so you are able to determine the area in your viewfinder that you want the camera to meter.

Also, a lot of cameras have a something called AE lock. It’s a setting that will “lock” the exposure settings to whatever you metered on no matter where you move. It’s a great tool to learn.

Learning how to use your meter can make a world of difference in the photographs you take. Try it in a back lighting setting and I promise you’ll be happy you took the time to meter correctly!

For more information and to see how the process works watch this video on backlighting.