Jens Bladt mused: > > Compared to all the fuzz about AE back in the eighties and nineties, when AE > was still developed intensively, I guess the manual exposure control > (presing the green button/DOF button) would have been af a big issue. > > I remeber adds that in fact said, that if a white car drives "through" your > viewfinder, while shooting, the camera will stop down further (is this > really an advantage??) in fractions of a second. This is how accurate AE has > become. That is OK, of course, but in my experience stopping down manually > ios not a big issue as long as I remember to do just that, just before I > release the shutter. Any exposure should be evaluated by the photographer > anyway - in order to assess back lit scenery, dark background, very bright > sky etc. regardless of matrix metering etc.
Fine, in theory. Now try that when you're tracking a group of cars cresting a hill, swooping down towards you into a somewhat shaded area, and getting back into full sunlight as they drive away, and you want to grab the shot at the best moment (which depends on what the cars are doing). If I'm doing anything manually it would be changing the zoom to follow the cars. If I know just where I'll be taking the shot I'll turn off AE, anyway; you don't *want* exposure to change depending on whether your primary subject is a black car or a white car. If I have to use AE, though, I'll use the full multi-segment metering (not matrix metering - that's copyrighted); center-weighted metering performs significantly worse in this scenario.