Tom -- You sort of have the concept, but to my preference, evaluative metering is, at its best, is like an informed multi-spot metering assessment. Taking light readings from multiple areas or segments, it should be a terrific answer to what the scene is like, from overall brightness, to specifics like back-lighting, subject reflectance, and many other things. Theoretically, it should be far advanced refinement of the Averaging, Center-weighted evolution. And it should be applicable to the majority of shooting situations.
On top of this, supposedly Nikon has introduce a memory bank of comparative scenes, subjects or images, which can be matched (like CSI fingerprint scanning?
) to the information it is capturing.
It seems like a slam dunk for anyone wanting to use a more sophisticated system, and for other brands, it does seem to generally provide those results. With Nikon, there is some fly in the ointment.
Just for the record, I haven't noticed Nikon's metering to be particularly influenced by the AF spot chosen. I tried half-press lock on AF for a bright and dark area of the scene, and both exposues came out the same with single focus point AF. On my Canon 1Ds, the AF selection has a huge influence on the exposure.
Here are two examples from the D7000. The first shot has the AF point on the center palm trunk. The second shot is on the dark green cypress (now in the center). As you can see, very little difference in the exposure.
OTOH, the Canon 1Ds, show the exposure is directly influenced by the choice of single AF point.
On top of this, supposedly Nikon has introduce a memory bank of comparative scenes, subjects or images, which can be matched (like CSI fingerprint scanning?
) to the information it is capturing.It seems like a slam dunk for anyone wanting to use a more sophisticated system, and for other brands, it does seem to generally provide those results. With Nikon, there is some fly in the ointment.
Just for the record, I haven't noticed Nikon's metering to be particularly influenced by the AF spot chosen. I tried half-press lock on AF for a bright and dark area of the scene, and both exposues came out the same with single focus point AF. On my Canon 1Ds, the AF selection has a huge influence on the exposure.
Here are two examples from the D7000. The first shot has the AF point on the center palm trunk. The second shot is on the dark green cypress (now in the center). As you can see, very little difference in the exposure.
OTOH, the Canon 1Ds, show the exposure is directly influenced by the choice of single AF point.
