Well, when Bruce loaned me his istD for a day, we discussed the best way to expose with the digi. However, this past weekend was a different situation. The owner of the istDs was shooting JPEG for a couple of good and understandable reasons (although I am on a small crusade to move her in the direction of RAW). Plus, the original purpose of her bringing the digi, as far as i was concerned, was to compare the results of one lens used on that camera to the results of another used on a film camera.
In the camera's favor, I was a bit overwhelmed with all the things I had to think about when using the digi, and i was there primarily not to learn about the istDs, but to grab the MZ-5n. My camera of choice that day, for my own photography, was a humble Pentax K-body and an old K28/3.5 lens ... Shel > [Original Message] > From: Rob Studdert > On 20 Jul 2005 at 1:12, Shel Belinkoff wrote: > > > Hi Rob - I was always of the impression that multi-segment metering was > > "smarter" than that. I guess it's just some more marketing hype, or > > perhaps the differences in the scene were such that it could fool the > > meter. It's results like these that consistently keep me skeptical of > > in-camera meters. Another fine example of how "technology is my friend." > > Usually I just eyeball a scene or make a quick scan using a hand-held > > meter, set the exposure, and start shooting, never changing the exposure > > unless the light has changed. That you can't get repeatable results even > > in manual mode is disheartening. > > It's actually pretty smart but you have to be aware of what it's actually doing > in order to take full advantage of it. Remember digital capture is much like > shooting slide film, highlights are a problem and things can get quite messy > with gross over-exposure. Multi-segment metering looks across the whole frame > and attempts to keep the highlights within a reasonable range and in balance > with the remainder of the frame. It definitely didn't suite your needs given > the shot you used it for but I bet it taught you a lesson or two :-) > > Where multi-segment metering shines is when capturing images in RAW format, it > most often produces the most broad and versatile exposure. Unfortunately > sometimes these excellent exposures look like crap before post processing. With > in camera JPG you have no choice but to get the exposure right given that a > goodly chunk of the captured data is discarded in the in-camera RAW transform. > > IMHO a DSLR won't really start working for you until you stop treating it like > a film camera.
