I’ve talked about matrix metering (here and here). This time, let’s tackle spot metering.
The idea of spot metering is to skip straight to the punch and tell the camera what it wants to know: namely, what middle grey looks like in your current lighting (OK, there’s some argument about “middle grey”, I’ll tackle that in a moment.) You point your camera at a known middle grey value, usually using digital camera accessories called “grey cards“, and voila! your metering is complete, and your exposures should be ace. I mean, Ansel Adams fought for it, so you know its got history behind it.
The problem? Boy is it horribly annoying to stick a grey card in every scene you want to shoot. In the past people have used “eh, close enough” standards like concrete, or grass. Values that the camera sees as close enough to middle for your exposure to likewise be close enough. But, there’s a better way.
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