Low-key and spot metering!

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> With a digital camera you will see this straight away on the screen. You don't know you are born. How can you go wrong?

Usually by taking boring photos.

The technology stuff is less of a problem I find

 

[Firky]

will come back to this... pc doing a nose dive.

I smell burning then it crashes

 

[Firky]

Just out of interest, have you tried spot metering on one of the shadows in a dark scene and then doing some -eV?

Yeah, I've had a play but haven't taken any shots with it I am happy with. Need to play more!

 

[Firky]

With a digital camera you will see this straight away on the screen. You don't know you are born. How can you go wrong?

When the subject won't stay still

 

[Firky]

I don't think I will ever shoot in matrix again, I've fallen for spot

 

[Firky]

took a reading from the dark part this time and desaturated everything some 40% bar the reds. I don't like the photo but I quite like the results...

 

[weltweit]

My thoughts about - spot metering in manual - or - auto matrix exposure and compensation - is that if you are doing either well then whites in the scene should come out as whites in the raw/jpg file and blacks should come out as blacks pre any photoshopping etc.

I just yesterday saw a talk by an experienced photographer around his darkroom and digital work. What amazed me was that it came out that despite being very experienced with photography he used the camera in auto/evaluative/matrix mode and never compensated in camera at all. All his images when taken from the camera were tonaly 18% grey and he works on every image extensively in photoshop.

Personally I like to do as much in the camera as possible.

firky nice boat pic, if that is straight from the camera it is good, has all the tone range from light whites to dark shadows.

Only negative about going the spot route is you may want to switch back to letting the camera do the work when there is no time available for each shot, I sometimes do kids parties for fun and I have to go auto exposure because they move about so fast which is half the fun - blurry panning exciteable kids make great images I think .

 

[Hagal]

took a reading from the dark part this time and desaturated everything some 40% bar the reds. I don't like the photo but I quite like the results...

Where did you meter, from the right of the numbering?