<< on 2/14/01 5:52 PM, dosk at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > May be quite simple, but I still don't understand it, Philippe. Your answer > seems only to complicate it even more for me... > But thanks for trying anyway, > Dosk >> Let me give this a try. Take a picture of someone with a strong light in the background. The person comes out dark and the background comes out light. This is because your camera 'reads' the whole scene and exposed for the average (or maybe a center weighted average). It thinks the scene is pretty light and exposes accordingly. But what you really want is to make the person in the picture look good and the background go overexposed white. If you had a spot meter, you could point the spot at the person's face and get an exposure reading. This would give you the right exposure for the person and you would let the background go wherever it needed to (probably white, overexposed). So you use the spot meter on the part of the scene you want exposed properly, you meter this part, and you expose according to the meter. If the total scene is light or dark and the subject matter is the opposite, you get the subject matter looking good and the background much lighter or darker. So the spot meter helps you figure the right exposure when the subject is against a very light or dark background that would fool your average or center weighted meter. Regards, Bob S. Now use this camera to take a picture of someone with strong light behind them. Their face comes out dark. The camera has - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
