[gosman]

Good point Dan, many people on this forum probably have never studied the Ansel Adams Zone System. Us old timers know that the metering is only one of the tools and you need to understand that the meter reads everything at Zone 5 medium gray. So if someone is using the spot metering, unless they point at a medium gray object in the picture, their exposure will not be correct. Evaluative and matrix metering is an attempt to average these zones out, but it doesn't always happen correctly unless there are even zones within the picture.

[Stagnant]

When shooting scenes, where the lower half is considerably darker than the upper half, or when I can't change my position, to get the light from the proper direction, I underexpose the image, so as to have the sky and highlights properly exposed. Normally I process such kind of scenes in DxO 9, as I found it to be the most suitable tool for such tasks.

Processed Image.


Unprocessed Image.

I compensated exposure +0.22 EV (Center Weighted Average in Smart Exosure menu), turned on Smart Lighting (115), lightened the shadows slightly (+5) and chose neutral tonality V2 in colour rendering options. The original RAW file was shot using a -1.3 EV correction.

[mtngal]

Up until the K3 I've always used center-weighted metering and underexposed slightly (or a lot depending on what it looks like when reviewing the picture). I've found the K3 much more accurate when it comes to multi-segment metering, and now use it as my default setting, changing to spot metering only when I specifically need that. I've been going back and forth between -.3 Ev and 0 Ev with the K3 while the K5 stayed at -.03. Since so often I'm taking pictures under harsh lighting conditions, I just continue to chimp fairly often. That's one of the things I love about digital, compared to film. My exposures became much more reliable when I figured out that the camera's meter will expose to grey - if the majority of the scene is dark it will expose that to grey and blow the highlights. If the majority of the scene is white, like snow, the camera will expose that to grey, clipping the darks to black. I find it easier to recover from clipping in the shadows than it is from clipping in the highlights, so I tend to underexpose a bit. Since I find the K3 less tolerant than the K5 (or the K100) when it comes to this, I chimp more.

[jeanpierre]

my experience with the measurement of highlights with K-3 is not so good.
I use the matrix metering. However, I found out that EV -0.7 is a good general correction for landscape shots. Depending also which lens you have! For Zoomlenses EV -0.3 will match or even EV 0.

When I have time, then I measure with Spotmetering and take the average, or sometime with greycard.

I shoot only raw. I found out that the K-3 NOT like overexposure! Blowout is blowout! The new CMOS Sensor without Aliasing-filter is tricky vor highlight blowout! Take care!
That's why I rather try to underexpose. See histogram in LV mode.

When shooting indoors, cloudiness, or where no large differences in light, there matrix metering works very well and accurate.

Hope I can help.

[lister6520]

You always need to bump exposure when shooting in snow. It's not because of highlights, it's because the meter wants to average the intensity in the image to middle grey. If most of your photo is white, it skews the balance, and the camera underexposes (turns white grey). I shoot in snow often, and normally use +1 EV.
Understanding Camera Metering and Exposure

The metering on the K-3 works differently. It does not try to achieve an average of any level - that is what is normally done with a camera having few metering segments, or just one. The K-3 measures the intensity at 86,000 individual points and aims for an exposure in which not too many of those segments are above saturation point. There are actually very few DSLRs apart from the K-3 that have a metering sensor with enough segments to work in this manner. This should in tehory completely eliminate the possibility of blown highlights but there are times where it has to make a compromise as preventing overexposure of a few highlights may result in very low exposure for the rest of the image.

Cameras without such an exposure sensor have only a few tens of metering segments and do indeed work in the manner described in that article but the K-3 should not have such limitations.

[audiobomber]

Cameras without such an exposure sensor have only a few tens of metering segments and do indeed work in the manner described in that article but the K-3 should not have such limitations.

IME, it still needs +EV in snow.

[lister6520]

IME, it still needs +EV in snow.

Yes, and also with very bright clouds, for the reason I mentioned in a previous post, that the sensor itself seems to get saturated at that brightness and therefore cannot give a correct reading.


Edit:
Just realised you said +ev. That's odd because I need to -ev in such situations to avoid the snow/clouds being over exposed.

I was thinking and writing about such situations causing over exposure, not under exposure.

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Last edited by lister6520; 01-25-2014 at 03:37 PM.

[audiobomber]

Yes, and also with very bright clouds, for the reason I mentioned in a previous post, that the sensor itself seems to get saturated at that brightness and therefore cannot give a correct reading.


Edit:
Just realised you said +ev. That's odd because I need to -ev in such situations to avoid the snow/clouds being over exposed.

I was thinking and writing about such situations causing over exposure, not under exposure.

It depends on how much of the photo the bright white snow or cloud covers. If most of the frame is dark ground and some bright clouds, the camera might overexpose the highlights. When I'm shooting in the snow, it often covers a good deal of the frame, which makes the camera underexpose.

Do you use Highlight Protection? It's very effective at preventing burnt highlights.

[kenyee]

I shoot only raw. I found out that the K-3 NOT like overexposure! Blowout is blowout! The new CMOS Sensor without Aliasing-filter is tricky vor highlight blowout!

This has been true since the D7000/K-5's Sony sensor.
A while back, there was a comparison of the D800 with a Canon 5D. The Canon had 1 stop more DR in the highlights. All the DR in the Sony sensors is in the shadows, so underexposing and fixing in post is the right thing to do...

[lister6520]

It depends on how much of the photo the bright white snow or cloud covers. If most of the frame is dark ground and some bright clouds, the camera might overexpose the highlights. When I'm shooting in the snow, it often covers a good deal of the frame, which makes the camera underexpose.

Do you use Highlight Protection? It's very effective at preventing burnt highlights.

Yes I usually have highlight protection turned on.

The problem doesn;t seem to be how much of the picture is bright clouds/snow but just the absolute brightness. It seems that beyond a certain point it just does not reduce exposure any further. I tried shooting a blank piece of paper in front of a bright floodlight and it still gets overexposed. If I set manually to get the right exposure the meter tells me I am underexposing by up to three stops even though the resulting picture is OK. I also found that with slow lenses I never get overexposed clouds but with fast ones it happens often. Similarly just putting a 2 stop ND filter seems to solve the problem and I get good exposure every time, whether or not there are bright clouds or other highlights. It seems to be jut a matter of it not being able to measure beyond a certain brightness.

[Stagnant]

This has been true since the D7000/K-5's Sony sensor.
A while back, there was a comparison of the D800 with a Canon 5D. The Canon had 1 stop more DR in the highlights. All the DR in the Sony sensors is in the shadows, so underexposing and fixing in post is the right thing to do...

This seems to be the most logical way of dealing with this peculiarity of the sensor family in question. I illustrated that with my examples above.