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Page 15 of 26
Last updated on February 28, 2008
How do I use the different metering modes?
The E-3 provides several metering options that allow the photographer to have greater
creative control over exposure. The metering modes can be set in the Control Panel
screen or the camera menu. Descriptions and applications of the metering modes are
detailed below:
Digital ESP metering is recommended for general use. The camera
measures and calculates the light differences in 49 separate areas of the
image. The mode can be changed to ESP+AF in the menu to center the
metering on one of the three AF frames seen in the camera viewfinder.
Center Weighted Averaging metering provides average metering
between the subject and the background lighting, placing more weight on
the center of the frame. Use this mode to prevent the light level of the
background from affecting the exposure value of the main subject.
Spot metering meters an area of about 2% of the frame around the
center AF frame. This mode can be used to meter a backlit subject. Spot
metering must be used very carefully because the brightness of the subject
area that the metering spot is centered on can dramatically influence the
final exposure.
HI Spot metering performs the same as Spot metering but compensates
toward overexposure, allowing accurate white reproduction. For example:
with normal Spot metering, snow would be captured as grey rather than
white. The HI Spot Metering compensates so that the snow would appear
whiter in the exposure.
SH Spot metering is the inverse of HI Spot metering and compensates
toward underexposure to keep dark areas from exposing lighter toward
grayness. An example would be photographing a black cat on a light
background. SH Spot metering would underexpose the cat so that it would
expose as black rather than gray.
What is the purpose of Exposure Compensation?
Metering systems in cameras measure light but do not have a way of determining what
the subject matter is, so the exposure decisions the metering system makes may not
always be appropriate for the subject matter. This phenomenon is called subject failure.
As with Spot metering, the human touch may be required to arrive at correct exposures.
Exposure Compensation allows the photographer to set up the camera to under- or
overexpose in specific situations.
The Exposure Compensation scale is shown on the LCD’s control panel. It looks like this:
In the example, Exposure Compensation is set to underexpose one f-stop. The function
can be set to under- or overexpose up to three f-stops in 1/3-stop increments.
It is important to set the compensation back to 0 before shooting subjects in other
conditions so the subjects will be properly exposed. When the Exposure Compensation is
set to 0, the scale is not displayed in the Control Panel screen.
The Exposure Compensation value is also displayed in the viewfinder.
