"Where did you get the information that it exposes for shadows when in multi-segment metering? I'm not trying to be argumentative. It would seem to me they should just call it expose for shadow mode, not a multi-segment metering mode."
They will call it what the marketing department says to call it. Tom, the most definitive place I have seen this is in the promotional brochure that Pentax sent me for the PZ-1p. I was amazed to see Pentax acknowledge this. It was also discussed on the list 2 or 3 years ago. I am being only partially facetious when I say that program metering seems to have been designed for photos of underexposed, backlit relatives. Often program metering does fine, particularly in moderately-contrasting light. If it works for you, use it. I got burned buying a ZX-50 a few years ago that had only program metering. It consistently overexposed in the kind of light I experience (bright and high contrast). The camera was nearly unusable with slide film. I gave that camera to my wife and bought two PZ-1p bodies. I used those with center-weighted averaging, and consistently got properly exposed slides. The metering was so accurate that I stopped bracketing. When my *ist D arrived I never gave program metering a thought. One of the first things I did was to set metering to center-weighted. I am happy with the exposures. OTOH, I was in Washington DC in June photographing the rather bright WWII Memorial. By accident the *ist D was set to program metering. All exposures were fine. Sometimes program metering works. I just can't predict when it will or won't, whereas I am confident in center-weighted. When the MZ-S first came out, someone thought that its program metering had less of a tendency to overexpose highlights than in previous models. I can't confirm that, but it makes sense that manufacturers tweak it. Years ago one of the camera companies (Nikon?) first came up with program metering as a competitive feature. Once one company had it, they all had to have it. Joe
