When do you use what metering mode?

Last weekend i was out on a shooting trip and because it was a sunny day a lot of the pictures were a bit bright. Long live the histogram function of the preview. That way you can spot too bright pictures fast.

While i was back home i remembered that i used partial metering for all the shots. Maybe that was a mistake..

So the questions are:

Do you use the same metering method on all your shots or do you change it for every shot?

Are there particular situations where you use a specific method? (Portrait, Landscapes, direct sunlight in front of you, etc.)

Rob

Well, it all comes down to what you are shooting.

If its a portrait that fills the frame somewhat, the it might be better with the partial.

But if its a scene with common motive, its better to use the evalutive metering. Also, you can try adding som -0.3 - -0.5 on your compensation, this will call for faster shuttertimes and therefore underexposing the image. But it all comes down to how you meter the light with your eye, and thats where experience com in to the picture.

If you have a scene, that are fairly bright with the main motive somewhat darker, ther are two ways. Either you use fill flash and light up the dark areas, and thereby keeping the other aeras correctly exposured. Or you concentrate on your main motive and exposure after that, leaving the sorrounding scene somewhat washed out (not nice).

Like this:
Top picture is the way that the camera would have made the exposure, and bottom picture is taken with -0.5 compensation. As you can see the top picture suffers from burnt out highlights (although some migth think that that is nicer since you have more details in the shadows). But with a lesser exposure, the colours will come out more powerful, and not washed out like when overexposing. Also, the pictures apper darker when browsed in IE.

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