centre metering and average metering?

[socrates]

I am little here so could you explain when you would choose centre metering and average metering? What effect does that have on day and night or any ?...thanks and happy new year

 

[d7t3]

when the subject is smaller in the frame, and surrounded by very bright or dark areas, use centre metering to set exposure for the subject.

when the whole scene is an even mix of light & dark, use average metering to [obviously] average the whole scene's lighting.

 

[espn]

How to tell if there's an even mix of light and dark? :dunno:

 

[socrates]

So how about in day time on a cloudy day like today? Average or centre? Thanks

 

[d7t3]

depends on your scene, can't give an easy answer.

 

[d7t3]

How to tell if there's an even mix of light and dark?

i also donno... would you use this metering? most probably i'd use it to get metering off the grass or something.

 

[huggable]

I guess if your subject has bright sunlight behind him, you'd want to use spot/centre metering, using him as the object for metering. In this way, his face be correctly exposed, while the sun portion will be blown. If you chose average metering, the sunlight would be not be blown, but his face would definately be underexposed (dark).

 

[foxtwo]

where do u get those 2 terms from?

I've only heard and read of center-weighted average metering. The metering is weighted at the viewfinder center and averaged with the rest of the scene.

 

[MDZ2]

For new user, I would recommend using the average or matrix metering of the camera as this usually yield good pictures about 80 - 90% of the time. However, if you have a particular subject that you want to focus on and you want to make sure that it is exposed correctly, you will use the center weighted metering (of course you have to make sure the subject IS in the center of the frame. If your subject is really really small, like a bird on a tree, you might even want to try spot metering.
Basically, average metering will cause the camera to look at the entire frame and average out the bright and dark areas of the scene. Center weighted metering will cause the camera to put more empahsis on the an area at the center area of about 30% of the entier frame. Finally, spot meter forces the camera to concentrate on only about 10 deg area from the center (some cameras will have a small circle in the center to let you know where this spot covers).

 

[selamatlzh]

I suggest you read this article.

http://www.photozone.de/4Technique/metering.htm

 

[d7t3]

where do u get those 2 terms from?

they do exist. centre-weighted means the centre reading is more important. average means the whole frame is taken as one big reading.