Originally posted by januko Thanks Adam!
Now for another dumb question, when you do spot metering, do you use the focus points to meter a certain spot?
Spot is literally a tiny area, so if it lands on something significantly darker than the rest of the scene (say someone is wearing a black shirt), it will completely throw off the metering. Ironically, this happens with smartphones all the time, though they use a different metering system.
Anyway, this is why center-weighted is recommended if you're not using matrix metering (or can't use it). It averages out multiple zones near the center of the frame such that a single dark spot doesn't lead to extreme overexposure.