What to Meter??

After reading and reading and reading, I feel like i still need clarity on, how do you know what to meter??? I've read, meter your hand, card, sky, etc....but in what situations and why, do you "meter" something other than what you're actually shooting???

You use whatever works for you. All of these metering tips are ways to use the reflected light meter in your camera to evaluate the incident light on the subject. The reason you don't meter the subject is that different subjects have different tones. Your hand (or a grey card) is always the same, but a white swan and a black bouder will meter very differently.

So if you personally decide that you palm metered at +2 stops in the same light as the subject always gives the correct exposure, then use that. If you are standing in shade and the subject is in the sun you quickly realize the shortcoming of this method as you walk the camera over into the sun with your hand to get a reading.

But WHY do you do this?? Meaning, in what scenarios would u meter something else BESIDES the subject...backlit, sidelit, etc...and what is the reason?? thanks all

The camera expects whatever you meter to be 18% grey. If you spot/partial meter white it will underexpose (it makes the white look grey), if you meter black it will overexpose (it makes the black lighter to 18% grey). Exposure compensation tells the camera "you're not metering 18% grey, tweak it a bit". If you meter a white dress you use exposure compensation of 1 or 2, to tell it the subject is brighter than 18% grey. If you meter black you use -1 to -2, as it's darker. For fair skin about +1EC is correct. If your main light is flash use FEC (flash exposure compensation) instead of EC. If you're in Av mode flash is fill so adjust the FEC down a little.

18% grey is just what is assumed as typical scene is. If you fill the frame with a persons face with EC 0 it will be underexposed (about +1 required), if you fill it with a dark suit it will be overexposed.

You should get the book "Understanding Exposure", it'll teach you all these things better than we can.

tim wrote in post #6110008
You should get the book "Understanding Exposure", it'll teach you all these things better than we can.

yeah i LOVE the book!!! absolutely LOVE IT...have read it about 4 times and re-read all unclear sections daily...LOL ....I just feel that i still don't completely understand WHY you would meter the sky instead of the landscape, the face rather than the whole scene, etc, and then recompose the shot to what you are intending to take the photo of...I just don't know WHEN and WHY to do it....

When?
Whenever your experience tells you that metering the whole scene can introduce error to your exposure.
Why?
Because you are smarter than camera’s metering algorithms..

izzy35 wrote in post #6110099
yeah i LOVE the book!!! absolutely LOVE IT...have read it about 4 times and re-read all unclear sections daily...LOL ....I just feel that i still don't completely understand WHY you would meter the sky instead of the landscape, the face rather than the whole scene, etc, and then recompose the shot to what you are intending to take the photo of...I just don't know WHEN and WHY to do it....

There are two reasons to meter the sky:
- You often expose for the brightest part of the image, and bring up the darker regions in post. Once something's blown it can't come back, but if it's just dark it's easy to make brighter.
- If you're photographing people you expose for the sky and flash to light the people, this prevents the sky blowing out.

I second Brian Peterson's Understanding Exposure...you meter different things depending on the situation

izzy35 wrote in post #6109962
But WHY do you do this?? Meaning, in what scenarios would u meter something else BESIDES the subject...backlit, sidelit, etc...and what is the reason?? thanks all

I'm no exposure guru but here is an example of how the same subject gives differing results. These were taken less than 10 seconds apart from different angles, however the duck was the focus point in both shots.

The introduction of water in the photo changes the metering algorithm just as a sky would. The result is totally different colors.

These photos are straight from the camera with only a resize for posting and save for web.

Sorry didn't turn them. ...

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wow that's a huge difference. Are we talking about white balance here (taking a picture of a grey card and having the camera evaluate it) or different actual modes for when the camera uses its like meter to determine proper exposure? I think the OP is asking why would you expose for your hand if the subject is a lot darker? Wouldn't that just underexpose the darker object? Or why meter off your hand if the subject is even lighter, overexposing it.(if that is even what the OP is asking). I could totally wrong and misunderstand everything too.

Exposure's similar in each, it's white balance that makes it look a lot different.

if i'm outside, don't have time to get my hand meter out, i take a reading through the camera from a bit of grass thats near by

daduls wrote in post #6111234
The introduction of water in the photo changes the metering algorithm just as a sky would. The result is totally different colors.

The difference in colors has nothing whatsoever to do with the exposure level metering. It has everything to do with white balance control - or, rather, lack of it.

I would suspect the camera was set to "AWB" (Automatic White Balance) for the two shots. I learned early on that AWB does not work well in anything but the most "typical" outdoor scenarios and thus I never use AWB. I also shoot in RAW mode so that corrections of white balance problems is simple in post-processing.

My experience tells me what I should meter from.

For example, I shoot a lot of cricket and in that sport the players all wear white. If I take a meter reading from the whole scene I often get over-exposed whites so (shooting in M) I will try to meter from the whites and then chimp and adjust the shutter speed until the whites look good. The histogram helps tremendously.