Originally posted by Mann I never used spot metering before, and I still don't fully understand how to use it, but maybe I just misunderstand you. It's said it's to be used with small objects, but from what I understood I would be able to spotmeter a few places (light, dark, grey, etc.) and then the camera would calculate a proper average. Is this possible on K20D?
No, not the camera: *you* could calculate the average. Point at a white object, then a black one, then a medium one; one in light, then one in shadow, etc. Then figure out for yourself where in that that range you want exposure to be. Spot meter doesn't "save" up answers and then combine them for you - it simply reports the exposure necessary to turn the thing you are looking at into a medium value. Point at white, and you get an exposure that renders the white gray. Point it at black, and you get an exposure that renders te black gray.
Quote: Also, how do I operate it on the camera effectively? Do I point at something, half-press, then get the desired frame, then shoot? Manual focus? Autofocus? Etc., etc. Spot metering is really new to me (as is the K20D).
Basically, if you don't have a really specific reaosn to use it, don't. It's an extremely special tool that requires you to know exactly what you are pointing at and why, and be able to do the "averaging" yourself if you wish to point at several objects.
Focus has nothing to do with metering (at least, nothing that is relevant here. Use AF or MF as you see fit; that's not relevant to this discussion.
Quote: So far, multi-segment metering works fine for me. I assume this mode does average the scene.
Well, it doesn't "average" in any literal sense (eg, add up and divide by the number of segments). It does however try to come up with an exposure that it thinks might be appropriate for the scene as a whole, as opposed to spot metering, which completely ignores everything except the center and tries to make the object at center come out medium valued. And indeed, if often does a good job, but there will always be situations where it chooses an exposure other than you might have preferred. Most typically, by making the exposure too dark because it seems a bright highlight and it doesn't want that highlight overexposed, even though you probably would have preferred it did overexpose the highlight so the rest of the scene wouldn't be rendered so dark. So you learn to use exposure compensation to override the meter in those situations.