Spot metering for beginners Today I will talk about light metering, which is sure for those of you starting this talk will be very useful, but is already well I have seen this issue give you my vision. Spot metering is something that has been invented to point out something about photography to be done, and that otherwise no further process is difficult to obtain.
Imagine for instance a face illuminated in the light of a candle where there is more light than if you carry that photo with measuring "normal" that you use always this aura of intimacy disappear giving way to a photo clarucha because the background is black and the camera in the normal measurement mode
sobreexpondría the image tearing that time.
With spot metering area by selecting it can be very good.
Think photography is always light and what we represent is light, so we often have to choose what kind of light we photograph and above all, what importance do we give this light on the rest the image regardless of what he has around him. In this case the metering insulates us from the rest of us also isolate the blurring of objectives giving greater importance to the subject and want to photograph him out of the picture showing that quality that you could not get it, hence I personally love to use spot metering in many cases because it raises the imagination and leaves only a flat picture "as as usual. "
Spot metering gives the photographer more control over exposure than any of the other settings, but this also means it is more difficult to use at least the principle for which You start. These measurements in addition to what I said is useful when we have a scene with a small object that need to be perfectly exposed, or when we are in a backlight take well exposed image, or vice versa, get just the outline., because the measurement was made in the very small central circle of the camera.
Take, for example in these two photos which are made from the same site, but driving the metering in one case pointing to the sky and another pointing to the monument in the sky measuring
Measuring the monument
Do you realize that the feeling is completely different?, that you could never have achieved a measure "normal" without compensation adjustments or later. The first has a very different environment to the second, right?
Set in this one, here I wanted to get the true light of the tower, at dusk and the sky brightness does not affect me to the image, so also would the sky blue and not-white.
always or at least almost always spot metering you have to sacrifice something for the thing we want to highlight, I say almost always, because we can always do a spot measurement at several sites and the area weighted we want to emphasize that the rest do not go too badly, but this Leave it to the measurement "matrix."
In the following pictures of a street in Madrid, is this dilemma, if we wish to emphasize the sky should be measured with the measuring point in the sky so that the camera fits in that light and well being.
If instead we wish to highlight the sidewalk, the sidewalk would measure directly:
The rest of the image will be as "visible" in one way or another, as the dynamic range the camera can represent.
Another example is if we make the sky a rainy day, then it is clear that metering is essential to the sky and pointing the lightest area there, that way we get the clouds.
This is a part of a larger picture where you can see the difference between evaluative and spot metering.
metering
Evaluative metering losing
details
Which of the two is better in these last two examples?, It depends what you seek, we seek intimacy or we can represent small details though the picture soda.
is also often used for "right" the histogram but this you know you need further processing and for direct photo is not worth pursuing this approach and generally get less noise in shadow areas may expose more and more light enters the sensor.
Here time is measured at higher light in which we want to retain detail (discarding specular reflections and glare) and dodge between 1.5 and 2 stops from that measurement to obtain a histogram shifted to the right without it stops. Later in the development of RAW histogram we bring that to your site, thereby collect the maximum information and reduces the noise in shadow areas. I've tried it a few times.
This method I particularly do not like too much, because I think what Dark is dark must come out without having to seek the maximum of the sensor, the idea that circulating online that the picture must necessarily have the full range of tones to me sounds like something out of the art of photography. Why should this be so? Who's the Boss? When I see the old painters painted many pictures dark or clear pictures, or how they saw life, and photography should be equal, and like the photographer, the mathematical optimization of sensor or any parameter because it is said by there simply disgusts me. Hence
spot metering brings us much closer to be more artists and more represent our experiences, leaving aside if a part of the picture comes out too dark or too clear, or if "rights" or if not, maybe what we are trying to play and will look much better.
I will always remember an autumn afternoon lying under a beautiful brown where the shadows, the light passing through the leaves did you really see nature as it is, then try to obtain a pure white or pure black would insurance damaged photo, spot metering here was critical to express what I felt at that time.
Friday March 25: 
