#metering mode

As a follow up on our brief crash course about Aperture, ISO and Shutter speed and how each affects your composition, we’re now going to take a closer look at the different Metering modes to see how this often-overlooked feature can actually be useful in improving your photography skills. This is a screenshot of a Nikon D90’s display info which shows metering indicator and metering mode. Most modern digital cameras are equipped with light meter that measures the amount/intensity of light in a given scene. The white portion on the images above shows the coverage of each metering modes where it takes a light reading and all of the black portions are ignored. Image Source Most cameras offer three metering modes; Spot, Center-weighted and Matrix (Nikon) / Evaluative (Canon). Other cameras, especially the pricier ones, have more metering options but for the sake of this tutorial we’re only going to stick with these three common ones. To give you a better feel of how these three metering modes varies in measuring the light on a given scene, we shot three identical pictures using different metering modes. These pictures were shot using Program mode at ISO 800 and without exposure compensation. Read more in our articles including "Exposure 101: Metering modes" and "Samsung’s Galaxy Flagship Lineup: Which One Fits You Best?".