Being adequately full of coffee and other caffeinated substances, I feel inspired to start a brief mini-series on a subject I’ve been interested in lately: metering.

Basic Matrix Metering

Let’s start with the metering mode most of us are likely to be using: matrix. Now, in matrix metering what your camera does is divide a scene into a grid (the number of segments in a grid depends on your brand, my E-3 Olympus digital camera has a 49 area matrix, the newest pro Nikon digital SLR cameras use an advanced 1,005 pixel sensor). No matter how it’s divided, at heart the basic idea is this:

1. The metering reads how much light is in each area.
2. It then decides how exposure needs to change to average the scene out to middle gray.

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