Centre Weighted Metering

Getting Creative With Your Camera's Metering System

Centre Weighted Metering (Pink Area Below) -

The metering is simply weighted at the center of the image and then averaged out for the entire scene. It is a kind of cross between evaluative and partial metering where around 60-80 percent of the scene towards the central point is metered for.

To be honest, I rarely use this mode if ever but I have tried it on a few occasions where the subject is heavily backlit.

What this mode will do is allow you to weight the metering for your exposure towards the center of the scene which is all good and well so long as your subject if actually in the center of the image.

If they are to the left, right, up or down of the framed shot, you would need to place the central point over the subject you are metering for, take a reading by half-pressing the shutter or using any other annointed buttons for this on your camera, lock it in, recompose and shoot.

This will then weight the metering for your subject and if they are generally darker than the background, they will be perfectly exposed while the background becomes over-exposed.

I like to use evaluative metering for most of my shots as I can "mimick" centre-weighted metering by simply zooming into the subject until they fill around 60-80 percent of the frame, take a reading, zoom back out and then take the shot.

Bear in mind that once you have taken a meter reading on most DSLR's, you have around 12-15 seconds to recompose and shoot before the metering system resets itself.

We cover this is greater detail over at www.atpmembers.com but for now...

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