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Shooting manual washes a lot of stuff out

Started May 1, 2020 | Questions thread
AshleyMC Senior Member • Posts: 2,228
Re: Shooting manual washes a lot of stuff out

If you watch the camera's light meter and try to keep the needle at zero by turning the various dials, you think you are doing things "manually" but in fact you are subsuming to the potentially flawed determination of the metering algorithm.

The meter is an aid, but not a consistently reliable aid.

Suppose you are shooting a white heron that is standing in front of a dark background of random unimportant foliage. The camera's automated light metering, not understanding the various elements within the frame and not being able to distinguish the heron as the subject, will try to do a "good" job of keeping "everything" "properly" exposed. The white heron itself will likely end up being overexposed.

A better approach is to use "spot metering" on the heron at the AF point. This feature is not supported in Canon's entry-level and mid-level cameras, e.g. T6i and 80D.

In certain cases, you use your thinking and experience to make a decision that overrides the camera's automated measurements. That's ultimate control.

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