> AE-Lock:
>
> Generally, the reason you use AE-Lock is because the main subject is
> in a different light than the rest of the scene. You use
> center-weighted or spot metering to take a "close-up" reading of that
> subject, then lock the exposure as you re-frame the picture. An
> analogy would be taking a torso picture of a person standing a few
> feet away with snow-covered mountains in the background. The two
> classic ways of metering this scene would be to go up to the subject
> with a hand-held incident light meter and take a reading directly in
> front of the person's face, or take a reflected meter reading from the
> face and adjust it appropriately. Center-weighted and spot metering
> give you the same capability without necessary moving closer. This is
> particularly useful for back lit photos of people when the composition
> requires them to be placed off-center. You take the spot reading, lock
> the exposure, recompose, then shoot. Matrix metering will try to
> evaluate the entire scene to give you the "best" overall exposure,
> which may or may not expose the main subject correctly.
I'm in the process of discovering my new F100 possibilities and have been
faced to two situations where the 3D matrix metering hasn't exposed the
main subject correctly.
1 - The scene was very contrasted. The main subject was off center - let's
say that it took the 2/5 of the left of the field -. The main subject was
fairly dark and a bit closer than the background which took the other 3/5
of the field and was bright.
As I read in magazines that the F100 3D matrix metering system was very
reliable, I tried to let it automaticaly calculate the exposure (where I
would have locked exposure on the subject with the center-weighted metering
and recomposed with my old Canon A1).
The result is an underexposed subject and a slightly surexposed background.
I conclude that the F100 3D matrix metering system isn't reliable in all
situations and won't save me from thinking when I take pictures!
Now the question: Since I think that the contrast of the scene was too high
to get a correct exposure of both the main subject and the background, I
guess the best would have been to use a flash to fill in.
What's the best way of doing so in such a situation (off center dark main
subject with bright background)?
2 - The scene was indoor. I was shooting a basket ball game. Ambient light
was very low. In most of my pictures, players were quite small in the field
(but approximatively equally distributed in all the field). I fired the
flash with the standard synch. The result is that players are burned on the
pictures and the background is quite dark.
I am disapointed since I read that the F100 3D matrix metering system was
very reliable with flash too.
I supposed first that the problem was caused by the smallness of the
players in the field but I shooted a picture of the team where the main
subject (the team) was centered and filled more than half of the field and
players faces are a little burned either.
Not only I'm disapointed but I don't know how I could have done to get a
correct exposure. I tried slow synch too and results are better but there
are some cases where I'd like to use standard synch and I don't know how I
can get correct results using it in such a situation.
Any advice very welcome!
Thierry
