# When do you use spot metering?



## JR (Jul 22, 2012)

I am curious to learn for what situation people use spot metering. In particular, since i do mostly portrait, do any of you use it for portrait when shooting without a flash?

I usually do not play with metering myself but by mistake i took a few portraits with spot metering inside without flash and actually found the skin tone better this way. Just not sure if i risk overexposing too much other part of the picture if i use this consistently...

Thank you for your insights...


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## ruuneos (Jul 22, 2012)

I like to use spot metering when taking macro's and want nice dark background.


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## paul13walnut5 (Jul 22, 2012)

> I usually do not play with metering myself but by mistake i took a few portraits with spot metering inside without flash and actually found the skin tone better this way. Just not sure if i risk overexposing too much other part of the picture if i use this consistently...



Thats exactly the situation where spot metering comes into it's own. However it sounds like you have been lucky with the correct rendition of the skin tone. I would use spot metering in conjunction with exposure compensation.
If you take it that the camera meter is calibrated for 18% grey then you may need to shift the metering by a stop or so either way depending on your subject.

Don't worry so much about over or under exposing other areas. Meter for whats important and let the rest fall into place. If you have people who are very pale, or people who are very dark then you will need to compensate from what the meter gives you, as it may try to render very dark or very white skins as midtones, which would be wrong for the subject and wrong for everything else as well.

The great thing with DSLRs is that you can preview or immediately check. Have an assistant stand under the same light source, take a few test shots. I would even be tempted to use manual exposure... once you've set it up for the light it will be right for all your subjects of any colour or hue, provided the light is uniform.

And bear in mind the meter can help, but it can also be wrong. Especially if your subject is far removed from midtone.


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## jabbott (Jul 22, 2012)

I use spot metering for photographing singers at a concert, or for photographing high contrast objects such as the moon. Although lately I have found myself increasingly using manual mode for times when lighting is tricky, as well as reviewing the histogram afterwards to ensure proper exposure.


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## sleepnever (Jul 22, 2012)

I used it heavily yesterday at an air show with cloudy to sunny skies, where otherwise I was getting great skies and heavily shadowed jets when using the default Evaluative. Was definitely tricky to use though when you're tracking military fighter jets up close and only that center dot.


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## pdirestajr (Jul 22, 2012)

I'd like to expand on the question:

How does one use spot metering in AI Servo mode when your focus point isn't center or linked to the meter.

I think my EOS-3 can meter at the focus point, but Canon took this feature away from most digital cameras for some reason...


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## paul13walnut5 (Jul 22, 2012)

@pdirstajr

Position the spot meter then use ae lock? You can vary the length of ae lock hold in the menu / cf of most eos dslrs.

Once you've activated ae lock a * appears in vf for 16 seconds. This is actually quite a long time for action subjects.

I miss that from the 3, but I'm often in the habit of using the centre af point selected with aiservo anyway, as on the eos cameras i've owned this is usually the most sophisticated (only cross point on my t3i, only dual axis cross point -conventional and diagonal- on my 7d) and if you use f2.8s or faster lenses (like my ring type usms the 70-200 and 100 f2) you get extra sensitivity.


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## bdunbar79 (Jul 22, 2012)

pdirestajr said:


> I'd like to expand on the question:
> 
> How does one use spot metering in AI Servo mode when your focus point isn't center or linked to the meter.
> 
> I think my EOS-3 can meter at the focus point, but Canon took this feature away from most digital cameras for some reason...



You can't easily. You have to buy a 1D or 1Ds body to do that. Those are the only models that do active AF point spot metering. It's quite a price premium I know, to get that feature.


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## distant.star (Jul 22, 2012)

.
My preference is candid portrait so I'm either on "spot" or "partial" most of the time. I'm usually outside where circumstances can change radically from one shot to the next so I want control of exposure in the face area, which is where I focus and is what I want to show/see. Spot can sometimes be limiting for only the face area, so partial is generally my preference as it meters a slightly wider area that may account for contrast between hair, clothing, hats, etc.

As one person also mentioned, spot is good for macro when you don't want the background affecting the metering of the tiny thing you want to see.

Another situation is night shooting, especially when shooting lights. This meters only the bright light so the light comes out correctly as well as providing a faster shutter speed. This can be good for holiday lighting too.

As for the "skin tone" you mentioned, I don't see exposure affecting this much. And it's easily altered in post if you shoot RAW. More often, in my experience, skin tone is a matter of white balance. This is especially true with women wearing makeup. I've had difficulty with pictures of couples where you can adjust to make the man look good, but the women looks awful. If you make the woman look good, the man looks bad. That takes more than WB and exposure to get a good look.


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## smithy (Jul 22, 2012)

pdirestajr said:


> I'd like to expand on the question:
> 
> How does one use spot metering in AI Servo mode when your focus point isn't center or linked to the meter.
> 
> I think my EOS-3 can meter at the focus point, but Canon took this feature away from most digital cameras for some reason...


I don't think the EOS 3 can do spot metering at the non-centre AF points, because I checked the manual for my EOS 1V and found that it can't - and they share the same AF system.


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## JR (Jul 23, 2012)

paul13walnut5 said:


> > I usually do not play with metering myself but by mistake i took a few portraits with spot metering inside without flash and actually found the skin tone better this way. Just not sure if i risk overexposing too much other part of the picture if i use this consistently...
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Thanks! Great feed-back...


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## JR (Jul 23, 2012)

distant.star said:


> .
> My preference is candid portrait so I'm either on "spot" or "partial" most of the time. I'm usually outside where circumstances can change radically from one shot to the next so I want control of exposure in the face area, which is where I focus and is what I want to show/see. Spot can sometimes be limiting for only the face area, so partial is generally my preference as it meters a slightly wider area that may account for contrast between hair, clothing, hats, etc.
> 
> As one person also mentioned, spot is good for macro when you don't want the background affecting the metering of the tiny thing you want to see.
> ...



This makes perfect sense! I tried it tonight for some quick snapshot using spot because lighting was terrible. Actually turned out pretty usable! For those interested, this is an ISO 16,000 shot!

I will for sure practice more for sure and make sure to stop using the default metering settings!


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## Scott (Jul 23, 2012)

I use spot metering and AE lock when shooting directly into the sun or anytime i want a subject to be correctly exposed and don't care about the rest of the scene. 




[167/365] by Scott_Henry, on Flickr




[093/365] by Scott_Henry, on Flickr

When I shoot gigs, i use spot meter to meter the performer, then take those values and put the camera in manual mode and shoot away without having to worry about spinning stage lights throwing out my exposure. Works most of the time...


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## wickidwombat (Jul 23, 2012)

i pretty much only use spot metering, i may change it to evaluative if im shooting some street stuff from the hip
but if i'm looking through the viewfinder i'm using spot metering


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## haring (Jul 24, 2012)

Honestly, I don't really use them. I used them a lot while shooting film in the old days.


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## Drizzt321 (Jul 24, 2012)

smithy said:


> pdirestajr said:
> 
> 
> > I'd like to expand on the question:
> ...



Never used either of those, but the 5d3 & 1DX have the same AF system, and the 1DX can do spot metering at the AF point. Just saying, they don't always put the same features in with the same system.


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## smithy (Jul 24, 2012)

Drizzt321 said:


> smithy said:
> 
> 
> > pdirestajr said:
> ...


Point taken, but the 1V is a superior camera to the EOS 3, so if one of them is going to have spot metering at the AF point, it's going to be the 1V... and it doesn't.


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## bdunbar79 (Jul 25, 2012)

Correct. NEITHER the 1V nor the EOS-3 has AF point-linked spot metering.


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## bdunbar79 (Jul 25, 2012)

I use center-weighted average mostly. In landscape it doesn't matter, so I usually use evaluative or center-weighted average. In sports however, I find spot metering with the 1D Mark IV very useful! Imagine a track meet or football game with sun overhead, and the player's jersey is shadowed. Select spot metering, meter on the jersey, use Av mode with ISO safety shift and auto ISO and you've got it. Make sure you're shooting in RAW though because the exposure won't be exactly perfect, but it'll work. Another instance is bird photography whereby you want a bird shot of a flying bird with a bright sky behind it. Spot meter on the bird itself with a bit of EC and again, you've got it. Portrait photography for sure as I find that preserves skin tones, but you again may have to play with EC to get it just right. Hope this helped.


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## risc32 (Jul 26, 2012)

I don't use spot metering, and with the instant feedback of an LCD i don't know why anyone would. I really don't know why i would want it linked to differing AF points either. But i'm weird....


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## Drizzt321 (Jul 26, 2012)

risc32 said:


> I don't use spot metering, and with the instant feedback of an LCD i don't know why anyone would. I really don't know why i would want it linked to differing AF points either. But i'm weird....



This is something I would love in the 5d3. Lets say you have a composition where the center is something very bright, say a window on a very bright day, but you're subject is inside in a fairly dark room. The metering would automatically expose for the very bright light from the window, so your subject would be very underexposed. If the metering was linked to the AF point, and you put the point over the subject, it'd meter for the subject instead of the window. You can still do similar to that, you just need to put the center over your subject, hit the AE-lock button, then recompose. But that's a bit of a pain sometimes, and one more thing to remember to do.


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## smithy (Jul 26, 2012)

Drizzt321 said:


> risc32 said:
> 
> 
> > I don't use spot metering, and with the instant feedback of an LCD i don't know why anyone would. I really don't know why i would want it linked to differing AF points either. But i'm weird....
> ...


Yep - it's more than a pain. I was taking shots of my mischievous nieces running around recently, and it's just not possible to AE-lock at centre and then suddenly shoot on an outer AF point within the millisecond time frames available. So I just had to make sure that the background was similar enough in brightness to the girls' skin tones.


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## paul13walnut5 (Jul 26, 2012)

@bdunbar79



> Correct. NEITHER the 1V nor the EOS-3 has AF point-linked spot metering.



Corr-wrong!

I don't know about the 1V, but the EOS-3 does.

Custom function 13.


> *Focusing Point-Linked Spot Metering.*
> With Custom Function CF-13, you can limit the manually- and eye-selectable focusing points to only 11 of the 45. This makes focusing point selection faster.
> 
> Spot metering (about 2.4% of the viewfinder area) is also linked to the eye-selected or manually-selected focusing point.



&


> The selectable focusing points are limited to 11.
> This makes focusing point selection faster and links spot metering to the focusing point you select.
> This setting is effective for spotlighted subjects on-stage, etc., when you want to maintain the framing of the subject.



From pages 56 & 119 of EOS 3 manual.


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## mb66energy (Jul 26, 2012)

I use spot metering exclusively.

Av + spot + AE lock
or
M + spot

The most important thing for me is to set the active spot region to that part of the picture where I see the "gray card"-gray - sth. like "medium brightness" - this works very well after 5 years of training


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## bdunbar79 (Jul 26, 2012)

paul13walnut5 said:


> @bdunbar79
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Interesting. I'm reluctant to shoot film in difficult or harsh conditions where I'd even need spot metering, but I'll have to try it out. I did not know about this custom function.


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## paul13walnut5 (Jul 26, 2012)

There are 3 modes to the custom function so please consult the handbook to see what may work for you.

All this talk of EOS 3's might just see me cracking open a cheeky wee roll of XP2 this weekend.


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## smithy (Jul 26, 2012)

bdunbar79 said:


> paul13walnut5 said:
> 
> 
> > @bdunbar79
> ...


Me neither - I'll have to go back to my 1V manual to check.


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## bdunbar79 (Jul 27, 2012)

paul13walnut5 said:


> There are 3 modes to the custom function so please consult the handbook to see what may work for you.
> 
> All this talk of EOS 3's might just see me cracking open a cheeky wee roll of XP2 this weekend.



Thanks. I think now you have a bunch of people going out and shooting film this weekend  Time to grab the EOS-3 again...


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## paul13walnut5 (Jul 27, 2012)

Cool. What film are you all choosing?


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## bdunbar79 (Jul 27, 2012)

paul13walnut5 said:


> Cool. What film are you all choosing?



Oh I don't know. We have a crapload of Fuji. And I mean a lot! What's good in your opinion?


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## Daniel Flather (Jul 27, 2012)

I only use spot metering, I've never have used the other settings. I can't even tell you what the other modes are named!


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## paul13walnut5 (Jul 27, 2012)

@bdunbar


> Oh I don't know. We have a crapload of Fuji. And I mean a lot! What's good in your opinion?



Always liked Velvia 50, Reala 100 & 800, and 160nps.


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## sawsedge (Jul 27, 2012)

When do I use spot metering? Almost never. Current meters are pretty good, but it depends on the light. I use it in conjunction with manual mode in tricky lighting. When the part of the image you want to expose "correctly" is a fairly small part of the frame, it works well. 

Which reminds me, I need to post my Pentax digital spotmeter for sale.


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## paul13walnut5 (Jul 27, 2012)

Do any of canons current cameras feature the multiple spot averaging function (again an old but useful feature on the EOS 3, I'm sure it was the FEL button) I can see more folk having a practical use for that than simple spot metering...


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## paul13walnut5 (Jul 27, 2012)

For info, the 1V also features focus point linked spot metering as a custom function, with a choice of either 11 active AF points or 9 active AF points (3 only offers 11 points) reduced from the systemic 45 points.

The 1V also features multiple spot averaging.


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## neuroanatomist (Jul 27, 2012)

paul13walnut5 said:


> Do any of canons current cameras feature the multiple spot averaging function



The recent 1-series bodies, including the 1D X, have multi-spot metering (up to 8 points averaged).


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## paul13walnut5 (Jul 27, 2012)

@neuroanatomist

Thank you.


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