What is Metering Mode - In Photography Skip to content

What is Metering Mode

Metering Modes describes the process of how your camera decides to assign the right shutter speed and aperture based on the amount of light the camera can be pick up. To put it simply, metering is a way for modern cameras to reflect light and determine the right exposure without using an accessory meter.

Examples Of Metering Modes

  • Spot metering. With spot metering, the camera will measure only a very small area of the scene (1–5% of the viewfinder area)
  • Center-weighted average metering
  • Average metering
  • Partial (selective) metering
  • Multi-zone metering
  • Highlight-weighted metering

Spot Metering

What is spot metering? Whereas multi-segment or multi-zone metering takes exposure readings from across the whole image frame, in spot metering mode the camera takes a measurement from a single point or or spot This area is often at the center of the frame, but it may be linked to the active AF point.

Center-weighted average metering

Center-weighted Metering evaluates the light in the middle of the frame and it’s surroundings and ignores the corners. Compared to Matrix Metering, Center-weighted Metering does not look at the focus point you select and only evaluates the middle area of the image.

Average Metering

In this metering mode, the camera uses light information from the entire scene and creates an averages for the final exposure setting, giving no weighting to any particular portion of the metered area.

Conclusion

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