Metering

When to use evaluative over spot metering? Would spot metering suit portraits where evaluative be more for landscape type shots?

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I just leave mine on evaluative 99% of the time.

Some people use off camera meters which is more of a manual way to go about it from what I understand. I have not tried yet. I try various metering modes but generally go with evaluative I think it is set on. I shoot mostly in manual mode, so from what I understand (and please do correct me if I am wrong), this means that I don't really depend on the metering mode when shooting in manual.

fitshaced wrote in post #12889899
When to use evaluative over spot metering? Would spot metering suit portraits where evaluative be more for landscape type shots?

My understanding of spot metering is that it's useful when there's a very large difference in brightness between foreground and background, eg. daylight interior with the subject in front of a window. Evaluative would be influenced by the bg and underexpose the subject. Switching to spot allows one to disregard the bg, but it's also possible to meter from too small an area, and still get bad results -- the center-weighted and partial modes sometimes work better.

In some of these situations a flash can help a bunch, but that's a whole different ballgame.

fitshaced wrote in post #12889899
When to use evaluative over spot metering? Would spot metering suit portraits where evaluative be more for landscape type shots?

Not always as skin tones are different depending on the ethnicity of the subject..

With spot metering, the camera's meter will place the subject's skin tone at 18% reflectance grey, meaning that all skin tones will have the same tonality..

If in doubt, get the grey card out!

Steve of Cornubia wrote in post #12890726
If in doubt, get the grey card out!

Or use a hand held meter in incident mode.

yogestee wrote in post #12890730
Or use a hand held meter in incident mode.

But that doesn't rhyme.

yogestee wrote in post #12890721
Not always as skin tones are different depending on the ethnicity of the subject..

With spot metering, the camera's meter will place the subject's skin tone at 18% reflectance grey, meaning that all skin tones will have the same tonality..

Yes, but you can then compensate your exposure for the varying darkness of skin.

Whatever mode you need to understand what is happening and when to overrule it. Here's an example where evaluative (left) knocks the socks off spot (right). The spot metering has decided that the box should be grey, so everything is underexposed. Evaluative metering has overruled that decision and tried to get the background exposed corrrectly. If you were using spot metering for this you'd have to know to dial in some exposure compensation.

hollis_f wrote in post #12890758
Whatever mode you need to understand what is happening and when to overrule it. Here's an example where evaluative (left) knocks the socks off spot (right). The spot metering has decided that the box should be grey, so everything is underexposed. Evaluative metering has overruled that decision and tried to get the background exposed corrrectly. If you were using spot metering for this you'd have to know to dial in some exposure compensation.

This is what I'm talking about in my post..

This is actually a big lesson for me, even if it seems simple. I think I've been using spot metering incorrectly and, because of this, suffering poorly exposed shots. Thanks for the tips guys. Going to read up some more on this.

I spot meter the highlights I want to keep @ +2 stops....almost guaranteed an ETTR histogram.

hollis_f wrote in post #12890758
Whatever mode you need to understand what is happening and when to overrule it. Here's an example where evaluative (left) knocks the socks off spot (right). The spot metering has decided that the box should be grey, so everything is underexposed. Evaluative metering has overruled that decision and tried to get the background exposed corrrectly. If you were using spot metering for this you'd have to know to dial in some exposure compensation.

Yes, evaluative metering will do an OK job some of the time, but in dramatic lighting it will fail you. Get used to spot metering, know when to compensate and take the decision away from the camera and put control into your own hands.

fitshaced wrote in post #12889899
When to use evaluative over spot metering? Would spot metering suit portraits where evaluative be more for landscape type shots?

check out this LINK that helped me to understand the different modes!

enjoy