Doug Kaye and I met up recently for a photo shoot in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. We first went to the excellent Cafe at the de Young Museum. Over lunch, Doug told me about how he had recently begun using both manual focus – and spot metering in his shooting with the new generation of mirrorless cameras.
As we were talking, I picked up my Fujifilm X100S, and took a shot of Doug. For that shot, shown below, the X100S was in auto-everything including autofocus with metering set to Multi. As you can see, it’s a bit blown out (these images are straight out of the camera).
Then, I put the camera into Spot Metering mode and took the picture that you see above. Clearly the better shot.
Most of the time, I let the camera do the metering in Multi mode – but clearly there are good reasons to use Spot Metering more often. I need to get more into the habit of doing so!
One reply on “Using Your Camera’s Spot Metering – A Fujifilm X100S Example”
For the benefit of anyone who doesn’t know the sequence…
Every time I pickup a new camera (which is now every two weeks because of reviews) I have to re-learn the steps. It’s pretty good on the Fujis. Set for manual focus and spot metering. Put the subject in the center of the frame. Press AE-L/AF-L to focus, then fine-tune manually. Let go of the button! Press the shutter release half way with the center spot on the subject. If it doesn’t look right in the EVF (too light or too dark) move the spot a bit and reset the exposure. Keep that shutter released pressed half way, recompose, shoot. Once you develop the habit, it doesn’t take any time or require any thinking at all.
You must log in to post a comment.