Metering problem

[student]

Basically no amount of metering can change the inherent contrast in a scene. You will not succeed. Whether a good sensor with good dynamic range can deal with this later at the post-processing stage, I do not know. But I do know that every system has its inherent limits. Exceed that, and it will fail.

The way to deal with such a situation is

1 Avoid such a scene as mentioned by roti_prata. You will save yourself a lot of trouble.

2 Put you camera on a tripod and take the same scene using different amount of exposure, and then merge the images together in PS.

3 Reduce the contrast in the scene at the taking stage, either by reducing the bright areas ( such as using a graduated neutral density filter) or increasing the brightness of the dark areas (such as using a flash - JediForce4ever & Jeffhiew).

4 Be creative and use blown out areas as artistic expressions. I will post a picture in the portrait section to illustrate this, next week.

 

[Zaknafein]

hmmm okay, so there's a limit, thanks.

so far, i have accepted that (all types of) metering is a way for the camera to (correctly) expose certain parts of a frame. but i know that is not exactly correct.
so what exactly is metering?

sorry guys, me getting mroe and more questions

 

[student]

First your earlier question.

An incident meter is one you hold in your hand, place the meter in front of the subject and measure the amount of light falling on the subject. When you use the "settings" advised by this meter, the exposure will generally be right, although a scene with a blown out area will still have that blown out area - because the inherent contrast cannot be changed.

All other forms of metering are called reflective metering. Meaning the light falls on the subject and get reflected from the subject to your camera. Now how you meter depends on where you meter. In sophisticated cameras there are complex processes to take into account different lighting problems and give you an accepptable compromise. Provided the lighting situation do not exceed the capability of such computing software, the exposure is usually very good.

Now coming back to "what is metering"? A much more basic issue.

Basically ALL metering system will are calibrated to make everything "grey" which foxtwo and catchlights referred to. But because you know precisely that that is what the metering is telling you to do, you can take steps to correct that.

Look at catchlights examples again, on the white dog and black dog.

If you meter the black dog, the meter will give you values to make sure you black dog is grey. Likewise the meter will give you values to make your white dog grey.

Now if you want your white dog to remain white,and black dog to remain black, you cannot blindly use the metering values without altering them.

When you meter the white dog, the meter values will result in a grey dog. So to make sure your white dog is white, you must give more light, either by opening up the aperture or by slowing down the shutter (or both)

Likewise, for the black dog. To make sure the black dog do not become grey, you have to reduce the light hitting your sensor. So you either make the aperture smaller, or increase the shutter speed (or both)

 

[Cactus jACK]

Now coming back to "what is metering"?...

dude!! good 1min tutorial!! :thumbsup: