Kathy Eyster's Blog

The proper brightness of your image starts with the camera's built-in light meter. This device measures the amount of light reflecting off the scene, entering the lens, and striking the sensor to create the photo. The meter ignores colors and only measures the brightness of the light reflected off the scene. Most cameras provide three different metering methods to choose from.  Pattern metering (called Matrix, Evaluative, Multi, etc.) looks at the entire scene framed by the lens and divides the scene into multiple areas, measuring the amount of light in each. Then the camera calculates the best overall exposure, often prioritizing the focus point. Pattern metering works extremely well in almost all situations. Pattern Metering Spot metering (sometimes called partial metering) does the opposite. This meter setting measures light only inside a small circle, or sometimes at the focus point, and ignores everything else in the frame. The camera then bases the exposure for the ent...