> Nikon may say that the RGB meter in the F5 cannot be fooled by difficult > lighting situations -- I bet they don't actually claim that, but that is > the expectation offered here -- but from the release of the F5 people > who use the meter have said that when shooting scenes with lots of white > the meter underexposes white by about one stop. > > This is the situation described by the original correspondent. > > On the other hand, if the F5 had a conventional metering system, as > someone noted, the white birds would come out medium grey because the > conventional meter would regard them (and everything else in the world) > as having 18% reflectancy. Thus to get a correct exposure of the white > in this situation, one would have to open up 1 1/2 to 2 stops to get a > true white. >From memory the scene described was of white birds against foliage. I think the weight centered meter of my FE2 would have given the same results. The problem is, the white birds probably only take up a very small part of the image, the picture is dominated by foliage. Even the F5's 1005 pixel meter probably cannot "see" the white birds clearly so will not meter them. The camera "assumes" the picture is of green foliage and exposes the picture accordingly. Unfortunately, due to the limited latitude of the film, the white birds are overexposed. Even if the F5's meter can "see" the birds, it does not know what the subject is. Consider these two scenes: 1. white birds in green foliage 2. sky filtering through gaps in green foliage Both scenes look the same to the meter - small bright patches in a mostly green scene. Which part do you expose for?? As a photographer, you know that the subject in each scene is quite different, in one case the bird (the white part) in another case the foliage (the green part), so the picture needs to be exposed differently. A camera does not have the advantage of knowing what the subject is, so it has to guess. The F5 is better at guessing than other cameras, but it is still a guess. Meters are usually calibrated to expose most of the scene correctly and to ignore small parts which are greatly brighter or darker. Usually the camera's guess works pretty well. Unfortunately in this case, the meter was fooled. Especially when using slide film, when the scene is contrasty and I want to hold detail in the highlights (as in this case), I tend to underexpose slightly to prevent the highlights from burning out. Roland
