[laissezfaire]

if I'm shooting indoors but with bright natural light, but my colorful subjects are on a black background, should I use:

1) spot metering and aim for one of the faces of the subjects?
2) center weighted metering and aim for the body
3) leave it on multizone

I know the correct answer is not #3 since the faces came out way overexposed. I was shooting aperture priority and thus, the shutter speed dropped considerably and got some blur.

[Marc Sabatella]

My answer would be, use center weighted, point at the face, then body, and choose whichever is the slower shutter speed of the two, on the assumption that this will be kind of a middle value, and the other will be lighter, and the background darker.

[Wheatfield]

Center weighted for sure. You might have to adjust the exposure compensation to dial it in perfectly.

[sewebster]

My vote is to leave it on multi-segment all the time and use exposure compensation. There will always be tricky subjects, no metering mode is perfect.

The choice between centre weighted and multi-segment is probably more a matter of preference than anything else, but if you aren't used to centre-weighted, multi-segment might be better when you have an off-center subject (since you might not realize you'll have to adjust). Spot metering might be the "best" in a way, but you'll always have to be very careful, and a small mistake will ruin the exposure.