spot metering with the Canon T90

We seem to be discussing the T90 today. That's fine with me; it is a great camera. I would like to hear from

you on your individual techniques on actually using the spot meter. I would find it hard to believe that many of

you would actually gather the 8 spot meter readings that the camera can integrate. Do you try to meter on on a

middle shade? Do you compile meter readings from the darkest zone and lightest zone and see if both will fit in

the estimated dynamic range of the film. I have searched a lot of photo.net, and online sites, and through the

many books and manuals I have gathered, and while many extoll the virtues of spot metering, I haven't really

found many, if any, that explain the systematic and repeatable technique on how it is performed, step by step.

(I do have a basic understanding of meters responding as if the subject is an 18% gray card, and know that one

must be expose more to make snow and white bridal gowns appear white, and expose less to make dark dominant

scenes look dark rather than gray.) Please tell me how you use it, and hopefully, that will generate some

discussion. Thanks in advance. I must confess that I usually play it safe and rely on the center weighted

metering option, which also allows me to lock the exposure by half-depression of the shutter release.

Kerry, I don't have a T-90 but I've used a Pentax 1 degree analog spotmeter exclusively for many years. I never take a

reading with the in-camera meter unless I stupidly forget my Pentax. But I believe spot metering technique is the same

no matter what the meter is. I spent several years trying to analyze a scene, pick two or more tones to use as upper

and lower limits and then average the readings with due regard to loss of detail in shadows and/or highlights. I find that's

somewhat a waste of time given the limited range of transparency film. After all any given image can only have one

exposure (with due regard for graduated ND filters of course). For the past several years I've developed a technique

somewhat like that outlined by John Shaw in his book Close-Ups in Nature. I pick that tone that is central and important

to my visualization of the image and decide how much plus or minus from an 18% gray card value that tone is, adjust exposure and

shoot. I find I bracket exposures very seldom and wouldn't be without a spot meter. Frequently I find my central

important tone is a blue sky. I spot meter about 30 degrees above the horizon, add 1/2 stop to slightly lighten the sky

and shot. Only with extreme subject reflectivity do I miss.

 

Luck to You Friend

 

Don B in Hampton Roads

I rarely use the spot meter on my T90 or my Leica R8, prefering the center weighted meter for general usage, or a separate hand held incident light meter. Occasionally I've used the spot with a long focus lens (3-400mm), in which case, like Don suggests above, I try to find the a key point of interest to meter off and mentally adjust based on my perception of where that point lies relative to a grey card. Same thing with macros whether or not there's an extension factor, since the TTL spot reading will take the extention factor into account.

Well I use the Spot meter quite a bit both in the T-90 and when using other bodies the Spot feature in my Sekonic L-508

 

what I tend to do is to look at the scene in the view finder and then in my head kind of getting an idea of what the average is if it's sky to dark earth with middle tones I will hit the spot meter on the high and low then maybe two three places around the mid tone. some times I will hit the area with the largest area of one zone a couple times to weight it that way.

 

other times like with bird photography if I have the time I will meter a single spot and go for the most important zone hopefully the eye or head.

As Mark said above, use the spot meter to weight your exposure to the areas of the image you are most interested

in,

bearing in mind of course if this area is very light or dark then you will still need to add or subtract EV's.

 

The other way I used to use the spot meter was when photographing motor sport. The usual white car on a black

track would play havoc with the average metering so I would spot meter off my hand then use the "highlight/shadow"

buttons to put in one stop of over exposure (my hand was the equivalent of a grey card +1 stop). This only worked

however if I was in the same light as the cars.

 

This technique was also very useful when shooting slide film, compared to my Minolta meter used in incident mode

it gave very similar results, but removed the need to carry an extra piece of kit (the Minolta meter)

 

I think this multi spot metering was one of my favorite features of the T90 and I wish they would re introduce it.

 

David

David, the EOS 1V and EOS 3 film bodies, and the EOS 1D-series digital bodies, have multi-spot metering. It's

crazy that neither the 5D nor the 5D Mark II do. And most of Canon's other bodies don't even have single spot

metering! I guess Canon's engineers think that evaluative metering can do the job of spot and multi-spot, which of

course it can't.

Some Olympus cameras, including my C-3040Z P&S digicam, featured multi-spot metering. In most cases the end result was identical to a single averaging or evaluative metering reading. When you absolutely need it, it's very handy. But there aren't many situations where it's really needed.

I generally take one or maybe two readings, 3 on rare occasions. 8 is vast overkill. 90% of the time, I'll just meter the brightest subject, and after moving it up ~1.5 stops, wave the camera around

and observe where the rest of the scene is falling on the exposure scale. Sometimes I take a midrange or shadow sample as well, so I can keep an eye on it's fall as I tweak the highlights.

I use my spot meter on the T90 quite a bit and just point at my subject, or a neutral gray equivalent, or compensate the exposure as need be, but this is not new information. I just wanted to remind people that there are two light sensors in the T90, adjusted with small potentiometers I understand. There is also a linearity adjustment. If you are having problems with you spot metering (I was getting overexposure in bright situations) it may need to be tuned. Like any camera, they can have their own personality, and to be consistently successful, you have to master that personality.

I use the spot meter almost exclusively as it is one of the camera's greatest features.

 

My basic technique is first brightest, then darkest. If that makes sense, I'll sometimes add a third reading for as close to the middle as I can see. I have used all 8 spots on more than a few occasions, however. Usually it's indoors, available light & with seriously messed up brights & shadows.

 

I find my shots in unusual lighting come out better with these manual techniques than they do with the matrix metering on, for example, my A2E.

 

William

Craig - thanks for the info about the potentiometers. Can you point me to a resource on calibration?

thanks - bernard

I use only spotmetering. I chose my cameras over the years so that they had spotmetering. The Canon F1N had spotmeter screens, which I got for both F1N cameras. Then I bought two T90 cameras for their spotmeters. I use a digital spotmeter by Pentax for my other cameras that don't have spotmeters.

 

I used to use only slow slide film. Such film is very sensitive to being overexposed/underexposed. I kept on reading on metering,followed by trying out the exercises on metering, and I pretty much got close to perfecting metering of scenes in virtually any type of light conditions.

 

When you have snow on the ground, with a white rabbit on snow, and then some people standing around, and other situations that require me to take multiple readings from small portions of the scene.

 

Once mastering spotmetering, it becomes a piece of cake to use any camera with any meter.

I use the multi spot on my T90s regularly (if I use another setting it is usually partial). I generally aim to take meter readings from the extremes with my first 2 spots to see what range I am dealing with. Once i understand that I take several more readings between these points either to expose for the shadow or the hilights depending on what film I am using and the subject. Since I scan slides but print film I tend to ensure that I do not blow the hilights with a slide film but usually expose for shadows and print for hilights with a print film. It takes some practice to get it right but it is easiest to start with a print film as it covers a wider range of EVs than a slide film. Contrary to a comment above Cannon has maintained the Multi spot feature of the T90 on all of its EOS 1 cameras. My EOS1N Rs and both my EOS 1V shave the feature as does the EOS 1D series. Sadly the new EOS 5D Mark II (yes I am finally about to buy a digital camera) does not.

As a former film cameraman I may add what the spotmeter is used for in filmmaking. When you are filming you are shooting in a controlled environment, even if shooting outside. You can soften natural light and you can add artificial light where you want. The lighting is done on the basis of what aperture you want to use. When lighting setup is finished you use a spotmeter to check if the shadows and highlights all fall within the latitude of the film. As a rule of thumb you don't want shadows under 3,5 stops of aperture and highlights not over 3,5 stops. This gives you a latitude of 7 stops. Negative film has a much larger latitude (9 stops and over) but for several technical reasons you want to stay within seven stops. In principle you can have area's which fall beyond this, such as so-called specular lights, but they will become pure white or pure black in the final product. All this goes for film used in photography too. A studio photographer will use a spotmeter in the same way. The problem is that in general photography you usually do not have control over lighting. Especially when shooting a scene with sky in the background you can not reach a situation where the sky and objects on the ground all fall within the latitude of the film. The best way to expose is still using a graycard. A spotmeter can then be used to check if there are area's in the scene that you might want to adjust exposure for. Using just a spotmeter for deciding which exposure to use requires a lot of experience and adjusting. Especially if the scene is predominantly dark or light (snow) the use of a spotmeter is difficult.

The answer above is one of the most straigthforward and best I've seen in a while. With my T90, I tend to first take reading of the brightest and darkest areas in the framed image, then take additional readings across the subject. If readings are biased too much to one side of the scale (leaving the reading of the subject out of the "zone" of readings), I try to recompose and then re-meter. Metering on this camera is superb. Too bad many newer DSLRs try to do all of this automatically. BTW I have found a number of older Film SLRs where the actual "center weighted" meter was out of alignment being slightly above or below the actual "center" of the viewfinder. I found this mislocation quite by accident while comparing some camera's light meter readings against a handheld meter. The true "meter spot" of many cameras can be found by gradually moving a solid object, such as a pencil or pen across the the camera field of view and watching when the reading suddenly changes. THAT is the actual location of the metering spot.