I think you need to be aware of what your subject is and how the overall image brightness may deviate from and average 18% grey. If taking a picture of a snow scene or perhaps a macro that fills your frame with a pale coloured flower, you should increase exposure. Typically I use aperture preferred auto, so that I can control DOF, therefore the comp dial is the easiest way to achieve this and it will adjust the shutter speed.
Newer cameras that use multi zone exposures systems do a fair job of compensating for back light and areas of extreme brightness. However, Peter Burin, in a recent test on the MZ-S commented that this camera, as with most cameras useing multi zone metering systems, tend to slightly underexpose frames with large areas of light tones. The example he used was a scene with a large expanse of concrete sidewalk; the camera compensated to properly expose the sidewalk and underexposed the rest of the frame. He used +1/2 compensation to better expose the overall frame. Of course, this is only relevant if you are using transparency film, where the in camera image is your final image. Negative film can, and is compensated for in the printing process. Bottom line is, to create the image you want, you still have to think about exposure amongst a myriad of other things, no matter how sophisticated your camera, This is why I get so pissed off when folks see my images and say "boy, you must have a good camera". Cheers, Mike. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >i read a nice piece on metering light in a recent outdoor photography >magazine. the thurst of the article was that to fully rely upon light >meters, was to "average" the light to an acceptable 18% gray scale. > >the suggestion was to use exposure compensation to move away from this >averaging effect of light meters & suggested that photographers make >decisions about the use of light rather than let their light meters make >those decisions. > >using colors as an example, the author stated that white needed actually +2 >stops of light to get what we think of as white (rather than the "averaged" >18% gray). he also suggested pink, yellow, lime, sky blue, lavendar and tan >needed +1 stop over the meter. - 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 .
