Evaluative - vs - Spot on a IIN for baseball

[pigtailpat]

Up to the present, I have been using evaluative metering on the 30d. It has been working well for me.

My question is on the IIN, is there any reason to change over to spot metering for baseball? I know that with one of the custom functions you can tie spot metering to a particular focus point.....

It's really hard to judge the difference in the cameras for baseball, as at least in my area, games are still like 2 1/2 - 3 weeks away....

Thanks for your patience with my questions........:rolleyes:

[40Dude6aedyk]

For a given scene and instant, a camera is only going to be able to do one single exposure consisting of SS, f-stop and ISO. That's it. It ain't really magic. In that scene there may be areas that are dark (reflect little light into the camera lens) and areas that are light (reflect lots of light). The dynamic range of reflected light may be larger than the camera can handle so you may get darks completely black and whites blown out.

Does it really matter how you meter? Spot? Average? Center-weighted? The camera can only do one exposure. And just about every exposure is adjusted in post-processing. You should probably be in manual mode where your brain is really doing the metering. You set SS, f-stop and ISO. You take the picture. You look at the picture and histogram. You make adjustments to your manual settings. You take the next picture, etc. What the meter tells you at first only gets you close. After that it can be ignored.

[dmwierz]

Pat,

I agree with Dude regarding shooting manual and taking control of the process. FWIW, when I do shoot in a program mode, it's almost always Av and I shoot Evaluative metering mode, then adjust exposure with + or - Exposure Compensation.

[pigtailpat]

Thanks!

Towards the end of last year's season, I was shooting more on manual, where I had consistent light. I still sort of feel like two left thumbs on manual, but I do try to force myself. My thought process was, given that I am sort of re-learning things on the IIN, that I would start by shooting on aperture priority, and switch to manual once I felt I had the camera down. It will take a little bit of getting used to, because there are many things different than the 30d where I am stepping up from....

So I'll leave it in evaluative on aperture priority for now, and hopefully, it won't take me too long to get used to the new setup so I can get more experienced at manual exposure in game situations....

:D