When you choose a shooting mode for your camera… Manual, Aperture priority, Shutter priority, Program (Nikon abbreviations) you are telling the camera how you are going to determine exposure. The problem with that is that the camera is just a piece of equipment and therefore can get a little confused on the actual lighting situations you are working with. For example… say I’m shooting a wedding and the bride and groom are getting married in a gazebo in front of a beautiful lake. Looking at the scene with your eye it is absolutely gorgeous. One might think that the photo will turn out exactly how it appears to your eyes. WRONG! What will happen is that since there is such a stark contrast between the shaded couple and bright light being reflected off of the lake just behind the couple that they will just be dark figures…. a silhouette! That’s a real problem! Typically you could set up some flashes or reflector to throw some light on the subject. But hello… it’s a wedding! No reflectors or flash allowed. So what do you do? You have a metering system on your camera to help it around these scenarios. Metering modes- which help the camera measure the brightness of the subject. The three modes are Nikon- Matrix, Spot & Center Weighted. Canon- Evaluative, Partial, Center-Weighted Average.

Evaluative/Matrix metering: This is the default metering mode that my camera stays on in most situations. In this automatic mode, your camera reads the entire area to determine how much light is available.

Partial/Spot metering: This type of metering is helpful for photographing back-lit subjects. The metering is weighted according to the very center of the shot – a very small area of the frame. Use this mode when you have a very specific area of the photograph that you wish the exposure to be based upon. This is the mode that I would use in the scenario described above. It tells the camera… “HEY! I am trying to expose for this tiny spot that is shaded and I could use a little help making it brighter!”

Center-Weighted Average or Center-weighted metering: This is sort of a mixture of the two above. It assesses the center of the photo, but also takes the remaining area into consideration. Honestly, I don’t really use this mode very often…. but that’s just me!

I hope you have found this to be helpful! Please let me know if you have any questions and I will be happy to help you out 🙂