Help me understand why the Z8 is metering the way that it is

[SCoombs]

The big factor for me here is that I have found the metering to fairly consistently be a lot darker than I think it should be. If we're just talking about the metering not being perfect I'd expect a relatively even tendency to both over and underexpose.

Consistent metering is a good thing. You can adapt & adjust to results that are predictable.

Actually I think part of why I posted is that even though it tends to underexpose on average, I still haven't been able to figure out a consistent pattern to understand how it's going to work.

For instance, in a series of shots I took to experiment and to consider using for a post on the topic (but which I never wound up posting) I set up some situations where I had someone standing with a dark wall behind them on one side and a very bright window on the other and I would position the frame so it was the person and the wall, then the person and the window, only to have it meter exactly the same either way.

If f-stop, shutter speed, or ISO is delegated to the camera for selection, it will choose settings producing an image in which the area being metered will have a middle grey lightness. Unless the camera is prevented for some reason from using the setting its algorithm has chosen, the meter will always read, 0. The delegated setting(s) will change but the meter reading won't.

Fujifilm cameras don't even have a true lightness meter display when one of the three settings is delegated. The display shows the exposure compensation (EC) setting.

An in-camera lightness meter will often display something other than 0 when the camera is in full manual mode with the photographer choosing exposure settings and ISO. It's performerance that can be highly useful. For example when doing bird photography on a sunny morning, I'll often meter off a field of straw-huen grass. If the reading is +2/3 stop from on-meter, I know most birds will look good at those settings.

I'm not talking about the whether it shows 0 or +/- whatever on the meter. I'm talking about what exposure the camera chooses to use.

For example, consider the following two photos:







In this case, it behaves exactly as I'd expect: in manual mode with auto-ISO, the camera chose ISO 1000 for the first shot without the window in frame, but once the window is in frame and so the overall scene is brighter, it chooses ISO 720.

...but then consider this case:









The camera chooses ISO 4500 both when the bright window is taking up a substantial portion of the frame and when the somewhat darker molding with the extremely dark, black fireplace is taking up a similar portion of the frame. In fact, in the second shot the rest of the frame is brighter, too: there is more of the relatively brighter wall and less of the relatively darker chair.

Then we have the opposite extreme:









In this case the frame in the second photo is very clearly much, much brighter overall - it's really not close - yet it's the brighter frame that gets the higher ISO.

 

[SCoombs]

Interesting to see two comments agreeing about the brightness. I have found that anything below the brightness levels exhibited here tend to look quite dark when printed.

For instance, this one has the skin tones getting up into the 230s and even up to 240 in places and when printed it was just on the edge of too dark.

I didn't find any 240 values when I loaded this jpeg into ACR. I saw several places where it got above 220.

But I'll add an additional piece of information that I learned from several years of shooting models using flash. You will get hot spots from flash. I can see it on that girl's cheeks and on the leg. I usually dismiss highlight skin values that come from flash hot spots when it comes to my "R 210 guideline".

That doesn't mean I ignore it. As I look around using ACR on her right leg, chin, neck, etc. I see that the R values pretty much stay under 220. To me, this image passes my own criteria for how I edit skin. If I'm being picky I will then use an adjustment brush with a minus highlights value to tame just the obvious hot spots from the flash.

So I don't see any big issues with this image. It looks about like it would have if I had processed it. But that's my taste. One comment I will make is that it looks like the bottom half of the photo is brighter than the top half. Or rather, from the shoulders up it looks a bit unbalanced against the brightness of the legs. Oh, it also looks like you had some color moire issues that you needed to fix. I always hate to have to deal with that.

I'm curious where are you seeing moire? The only moire I see is the monochrome looking moire you get after cleaning up color moire and in spite of trying all sorts of methods I've never found one that actually cleans that up.

If you say that this image prints significantly darker than what is on the monitor I would question your hardware setups between computer, monitor, and printer. If you've got things properly color managed all the way through your workflow there shouldn't be a big discrepancy between monitor and printer.

But we're now going down the rabbit hole of post-processing and printing. And adding flash in as well. That's all an entirely different discussion.

I think what I am going to do is when I place an order for some prints sometime in the next week I am going to take a handful of photos like the one we've discussed here and adjust it so the brightness puts the reds at around 215-220 and print those along with the way I had them originally and see how they compare in print.

 

[Leonard Shepherd]

For instance, this one has the skin tones getting up into the 230s and even up to 240 in places and when printed it was just on the edge of too dark.

Usually when a print comes out either too light or too dark it is because the printer and the monitor are not calibrated to the same brightness or colour levels.

--
Leonard Shepherd
In lots of ways good photography is similar to learning to play a piano - it takes practice to develop skill in either activity.

 

[SCoombs]

For instance, this one has the skin tones getting up into the 230s and even up to 240 in places and when printed it was just on the edge of too dark.

Usually when a print comes out either too light or too dark it is because the printer and the monitor are not calibrated to the same brightness or colour levels.

The prints look very similar to the screen. When I say that some prints have looked too dark that isn't because the look substantially different from the screen, but because the experience of looking at them on paper makes it more apparent that they are darker than would be preferred.

 

[Leonard Shepherd]

The prints look very similar to the screen.

OK

When I say that some prints have looked too dark that isn't because the look substantially different from the screen, but because the experience of looking at them on paper makes it more apparent that they are darker than would be preferred.

This is primarily due to some visual differences between transmitted light that originates behind a monitor screen when viewing electronically - and reflected light from a print surface.

One of the challenges is that prints have less dynamic range than many images taken at a low ISO and viewed on a monitor.

As a result some of the tones (stops of dynamic range) get compressed when making a print.

The way I resolve this type of issue is to start with a file that looks as I want it for viewing on a calibrated monitor.

I then create a duplicate file "for printing" and make adjustments so that the printing file produces the "look" I want in a finished print.

It is very easy using some recent software to near instantly select and lighten a face so that a "print file" produces a result that looks the way you want in a finished print.

In a portrait (in your example full length) the person is usually the most important element of the subject.

You are likely already doing it, though for relative notices it can take only a few seconds to both darken the background and to reduce its sharpness to give emphasis to the person in the photograph.

To some extent mobile phones do this automatically, and they can often be set to soften the background electronically when the picture is taken.

--
Leonard Shepherd
In lots of ways good photography is similar to learning to play a piano - it takes practice to develop skill in either activity.

 

[jthomas39]

The big factor for me here is that I have found the metering to fairly consistently be a lot darker than I think it should be. If we're just talking about the metering not being perfect I'd expect a relatively even tendency to both over and underexpose.

Consistent metering is a good thing. You can adapt & adjust to results that are predictable.

Actually I think part of why I posted is that even though it tends to underexpose on average, I still haven't been able to figure out a consistent pattern to understand how it's going to work.

For instance, in a series of shots I took to experiment and to consider using for a post on the topic (but which I never wound up posting) I set up some situations where I had someone standing with a dark wall behind them on one side and a very bright window on the other and I would position the frame so it was the person and the wall, then the person and the window, only to have it meter exactly the same either way.

If f-stop, shutter speed, or ISO is delegated to the camera for selection, it will choose settings producing an image in which the area being metered will have a middle grey lightness. Unless the camera is prevented for some reason from using the setting its algorithm has chosen, the meter will always read, 0. The delegated setting(s) will change but the meter reading won't.

Fujifilm cameras don't even have a true lightness meter display when one of the three settings is delegated. The display shows the exposure compensation (EC) setting.

An in-camera lightness meter will often display something other than 0 when the camera is in full manual mode with the photographer choosing exposure settings and ISO. It's performerance that can be highly useful. For example when doing bird photography on a sunny morning, I'll often meter off a field of straw-huen grass. If the reading is +2/3 stop from on-meter, I know most birds will look good at those settings.

I'm not talking about the whether it shows 0 or +/- whatever on the meter. I'm talking about what exposure the camera chooses to use.

For example, consider the following two photos:





In this case, it behaves exactly as I'd expect: in manual mode with auto-ISO, the camera chose ISO 1000 for the first shot without the window in frame, but once the window is in frame and so the overall scene is brighter, it chooses ISO 720.

...but then consider this case:





The camera chooses ISO 4500 both when the bright window is taking up a substantial portion of the frame and when the somewhat darker molding with the extremely dark, black fireplace is taking up a similar portion of the frame. In fact, in the second shot the rest of the frame is brighter, too: there is more of the relatively brighter wall and less of the relatively darker chair.
Then we have the opposite extreme:





In this case the frame in the second photo is very clearly much, much brighter overall - it's really not close - yet it's the brighter frame that gets the higher ISO.

Your last example, with the yellow shirt, does seem to be Matrix metering doing it's calculations. The shirt brightness is just about exactly the same in both photos, and the nose is just slightly darker in the scene with the bright window included.

I guess the matrix calc decided that the background was less important in these two images.

From my Hogan Z6 iii guide:

The one thing that is a constant to watch for is this: at default
settings the system is optimized to watch for faces and skin tones,
and adjust partly based on that. If you have a person being focused
on in a scene, the Scene Recognition System used by the matrix
meter optimizes exposure based on that face, regardless of what the
background exposure might be. Even turning Custom Setting #B4
off to cancel the face detection priority for exposure, the Z6 III will
still see skin tones in the focus area, and use that some in its
calculations.

He also says that the exposure calculations use the lens focus distance to help decide if it's the subject is close to the camera, or the focus is far away, like a landscape. Each get different exposure calculations.

That's why it's named matrix: it evaluates the scene using brightness distribution, color, composition, and focus distance.

 

[mrbr]

You can set center weighted metering to average the whole frame.

I didn't know this. I will experiment with it.

See my comment below about fast moving. In that case just expose to the right as best you can. You have to make it up in post if you must. A little under exposure is ok as a safety technique.

I'm not concerned with a little underexposure. I'm more concerned with cases where it has underexposed to the point that you wind up having to try to add color back in and it's hard to get a natural look.

Look, I think you are overthinking this. I also think you don’t have confidence in what your eyes are telling you. Why not. First of all metering has never been an exact thing You are looking for a refinement that does not exist. You need to be the refinment. If you really want accurate metering do what we did in film days and get yourself a proper light meter and meter the incident light on the face of your subject.

I almost think you are implying that (once again) the Z8 is defective and you are trying like crazy to get to the bottom of it - kind of like focus issues ?

I don't think there is anything defective with the metering. I have just been confused as to why it is metering the way it is at times and curious if others have similar experiences. It sounds like several do.

I can recommend Thom Hogan's e-guides, maybe you will find your answers there ?

Nikon Z System Books | Thom Hogan

I have the Z6/7 e-guide and if I have questions about my Z6, the e-guide comes to help !

A few have suggested that maybe there is something wrong with your camera. I doubt it . It did exactly what I would expect which is dial back when it saw the big bright patch behind the girl in your first example … I think my Z8 underexposes just a little too but that is a good thing. If I ever have to deliver instantly out of camera I’ll just throw in 1/2 stop ec.

cheers

 

[SCoombs]

The big factor for me here is that I have found the metering to fairly consistently be a lot darker than I think it should be. If we're just talking about the metering not being perfect I'd expect a relatively even tendency to both over and underexpose.

Consistent metering is a good thing. You can adapt & adjust to results that are predictable.

Actually I think part of why I posted is that even though it tends to underexpose on average, I still haven't been able to figure out a consistent pattern to understand how it's going to work.

For instance, in a series of shots I took to experiment and to consider using for a post on the topic (but which I never wound up posting) I set up some situations where I had someone standing with a dark wall behind them on one side and a very bright window on the other and I would position the frame so it was the person and the wall, then the person and the window, only to have it meter exactly the same either way.

If f-stop, shutter speed, or ISO is delegated to the camera for selection, it will choose settings producing an image in which the area being metered will have a middle grey lightness. Unless the camera is prevented for some reason from using the setting its algorithm has chosen, the meter will always read, 0. The delegated setting(s) will change but the meter reading won't.

Fujifilm cameras don't even have a true lightness meter display when one of the three settings is delegated. The display shows the exposure compensation (EC) setting.

An in-camera lightness meter will often display something other than 0 when the camera is in full manual mode with the photographer choosing exposure settings and ISO. It's performerance that can be highly useful. For example when doing bird photography on a sunny morning, I'll often meter off a field of straw-huen grass. If the reading is +2/3 stop from on-meter, I know most birds will look good at those settings.

I'm not talking about the whether it shows 0 or +/- whatever on the meter. I'm talking about what exposure the camera chooses to use.

For example, consider the following two photos:





In this case, it behaves exactly as I'd expect: in manual mode with auto-ISO, the camera chose ISO 1000 for the first shot without the window in frame, but once the window is in frame and so the overall scene is brighter, it chooses ISO 720.

...but then consider this case:





The camera chooses ISO 4500 both when the bright window is taking up a substantial portion of the frame and when the somewhat darker molding with the extremely dark, black fireplace is taking up a similar portion of the frame. In fact, in the second shot the rest of the frame is brighter, too: there is more of the relatively brighter wall and less of the relatively darker chair.
Then we have the opposite extreme:





In this case the frame in the second photo is very clearly much, much brighter overall - it's really not close - yet it's the brighter frame that gets the higher ISO.

Your last example, with the yellow shirt, does seem to be Matrix metering doing it's calculations. The shirt brightness is just about exactly the same in both photos, and the nose is just slightly darker in the scene with the bright window included.

I guess the matrix calc decided that the background was less important in these two images.

From my Hogan Z6 iii guide:

The one thing that is a constant to watch for is this: at default
settings the system is optimized to watch for faces and skin tones,
and adjust partly based on that. If you have a person being focused
on in a scene, the Scene Recognition System used by the matrix
meter optimizes exposure based on that face, regardless of what the
background exposure might be. Even turning Custom Setting #B4
off to cancel the face detection priority for exposure, the Z6 III will
still see skin tones in the focus area, and use that some in its
calculations.

He also says that the exposure calculations use the lens focus distance to help decide if it's the subject is close to the camera, or the focus is far away, like a landscape. Each get different exposure calculations.

That's why it's named matrix: it evaluates the scene using brightness distribution, color, composition, and focus distance.

Yes, this all makes sense of course. Unfortunately it seems to make it very difficult to adequately anticipate how it will meter a situation and to be make pre-emptive adjustments. For instance, you it seems hard to reliably decide, "I need to change the EC for this next shot because of the bridal gown and the background," because the system might calculate things in some unexpected way, or it might pick up on the face or it might not, etc. and all of these could mean very different things for what adjustment you need to make.

 

[michaeladawson]

I'm curious where are you seeing moire? The only moire I see is the monochrome looking moire you get after cleaning up color moire and in spite of trying all sorts of methods I've never found one that actually cleans that up.

That's exactly what I meant. I didn't see any color moire you missed. I see the residual artifacts left from color moire that couldn't be totally fixed. I was simply commenting that I see you had to deal with moire in this photo. When I did fashion photography color moire was always a real pain to deal with.

If you say that this image prints significantly darker than what is on the monitor I would question your hardware setups between computer, monitor, and printer. If you've got things properly color managed all the way through your workflow there shouldn't be a big discrepancy between monitor and printer.

But we're now going down the rabbit hole of post-processing and printing. And adding flash in as well. That's all an entirely different discussion.

I think what I am going to do is when I place an order for some prints sometime in the next week I am going to take a handful of photos like the one we've discussed here and adjust it so the brightness puts the reds at around 215-220 and print those along with the way I had them originally and see how they compare in print.

Do you do mail order prints or do you have a local shop where you have them done? Does the printing service you use have any .icc profiles for their printing and the paper they use?

I want to stress that I'm not trying to preach some absolutes here with regard to finished results. If you like the brightness of the images you create, and your clients like them too, you should keep at it.

Your initial thread was about the exposure calculations done by the camera and that they were consistently too dark for your taste. I can't answer the question of how matrix metering works to any level of detail. I find with my cameras it overexposes just as often as it underexposes. But I don't photograph people any longer. When I did it was always with flash and I was in manual mode and controlled exposure through the flash.

In the end, it could be that you simply prefer brighter photos than Nikon dials into the camera or it could be the camera needs adjustment. I suppose one test for that is to use multiple cameras and see if they all behave the same way.

 

[mrbr]

The big factor for me here is that I have found the metering to fairly consistently be a lot darker than I think it should be. If we're just talking about the metering not being perfect I'd expect a relatively even tendency to both over and underexpose.

Consistent metering is a good thing. You can adapt & adjust to results that are predictable.

Actually I think part of why I posted is that even though it tends to underexpose on average, I still haven't been able to figure out a consistent pattern to understand how it's going to work.

For instance, in a series of shots I took to experiment and to consider using for a post on the topic (but which I never wound up posting) I set up some situations where I had someone standing with a dark wall behind them on one side and a very bright window on the other and I would position the frame so it was the person and the wall, then the person and the window, only to have it meter exactly the same either way.

If f-stop, shutter speed, or ISO is delegated to the camera for selection, it will choose settings producing an image in which the area being metered will have a middle grey lightness. Unless the camera is prevented for some reason from using the setting its algorithm has chosen, the meter will always read, 0. The delegated setting(s) will change but the meter reading won't.

Fujifilm cameras don't even have a true lightness meter display when one of the three settings is delegated. The display shows the exposure compensation (EC) setting.

An in-camera lightness meter will often display something other than 0 when the camera is in full manual mode with the photographer choosing exposure settings and ISO. It's performerance that can be highly useful. For example when doing bird photography on a sunny morning, I'll often meter off a field of straw-huen grass. If the reading is +2/3 stop from on-meter, I know most birds will look good at those settings.

I'm not talking about the whether it shows 0 or +/- whatever on the meter. I'm talking about what exposure the camera chooses to use.

For example, consider the following two photos:





In this case, it behaves exactly as I'd expect: in manual mode with auto-ISO, the camera chose ISO 1000 for the first shot without the window in frame, but once the window is in frame and so the overall scene is brighter, it chooses ISO 720.

...but then consider this case:





The camera chooses ISO 4500 both when the bright window is taking up a substantial portion of the frame and when the somewhat darker molding with the extremely dark, black fireplace is taking up a similar portion of the frame. In fact, in the second shot the rest of the frame is brighter, too: there is more of the relatively brighter wall and less of the relatively darker chair.
Then we have the opposite extreme:





In this case the frame in the second photo is very clearly much, much brighter overall - it's really not close - yet it's the brighter frame that gets the higher ISO.

Your last example, with the yellow shirt, does seem to be Matrix metering doing it's calculations. The shirt brightness is just about exactly the same in both photos, and the nose is just slightly darker in the scene with the bright window included.

I guess the matrix calc decided that the background was less important in these two images.

From my Hogan Z6 iii guide:

The one thing that is a constant to watch for is this: at default
settings the system is optimized to watch for faces and skin tones,
and adjust partly based on that. If you have a person being focused
on in a scene, the Scene Recognition System used by the matrix
meter optimizes exposure based on that face, regardless of what the
background exposure might be. Even turning Custom Setting #B4
off to cancel the face detection priority for exposure, the Z6 III will
still see skin tones in the focus area, and use that some in its
calculations.

He also says that the exposure calculations use the lens focus distance to help decide if it's the subject is close to the camera, or the focus is far away, like a landscape. Each get different exposure calculations.

That's why it's named matrix: it evaluates the scene using brightness distribution, color, composition, and focus distance.

Yes, this all makes sense of course. Unfortunately it seems to make it very difficult to adequately anticipate how it will meter a situation and to be make pre-emptive adjustments. For instance, you it seems hard to reliably decide, "I need to change the EC for this next shot because of the bridal gown and the background," because the system might calculate things in some unexpected way, or it might pick up on the face or it might not, etc. and all of these could mean very different things for what adjustment you need to make.

Your pictures look very good on my screens !

If you want total control, M mode without auto iso and spot metering and wb determination using a know surface ( eg https://www.xrite.com/categories/ca...-classic-family/colorchecker-passport-photo-2 )

or

using a lightmeter for incident metering ( eg https://global.sekonic.com/sekonic-l-208-twinmate-analog-light-meter/ ) should allow that ....

But i don't think that is what you want to do.

--
Greetings,
Marc

 

[SCoombs]

I'm curious where are you seeing moire? The only moire I see is the monochrome looking moire you get after cleaning up color moire and in spite of trying all sorts of methods I've never found one that actually cleans that up.

That's exactly what I meant. I didn't see any color moire you missed. I see the residual artifacts left from color moire that couldn't be totally fixed. I was simply commenting that I see you had to deal with moire in this photo. When I did fashion photography color moire was always a real pain to deal with.

If you say that this image prints significantly darker than what is on the monitor I would question your hardware setups between computer, monitor, and printer. If you've got things properly color managed all the way through your workflow there shouldn't be a big discrepancy between monitor and printer.

But we're now going down the rabbit hole of post-processing and printing. And adding flash in as well. That's all an entirely different discussion.

I think what I am going to do is when I place an order for some prints sometime in the next week I am going to take a handful of photos like the one we've discussed here and adjust it so the brightness puts the reds at around 215-220 and print those along with the way I had them originally and see how they compare in print.

Do you do mail order prints or do you have a local shop where you have them done? Does the printing service you use have any .icc profiles for their printing and the paper they use?

It is not local. They do have profiles available I believe, but the truth is it's not entirely clear to me how to use them because the particularities of my own monitor are at play, too.

In other words, my monitor is calibrated. If I use the lab's profile, it would replace my calibration with the lab's - but that new calibration wasn't made to take into account my own hardware, so I'm not really sure how it is supposed to work.

In any case, I generally find the lab's colors to be pretty close to what I see on my minitor.

I want to stress that I'm not trying to preach some absolutes here with regard to finished results. If you like the brightness of the images you create, and your clients like them too, you should keep at it.

Your initial thread was about the exposure calculations done by the camera and that they were consistently too dark for your taste. I can't answer the question of how matrix metering works to any level of detail. I find with my cameras it overexposes just as often as it underexposes. But I don't photograph people any longer. When I did it was always with flash and I was in manual mode and controlled exposure through the flash.

In the end, it could be that you simply prefer brighter photos than Nikon dials into the camera or it could be the camera needs adjustment. I suppose one test for that is to use multiple cameras and see if they all behave the same way.

Let me try to get back to basics here, because I think in part the discussion has gotten into a but of a tangent over the differences between red channel values that are 10 points higher than one person prefers or 10 points lower than another prefers.

Originally my question here was not about relatively minor differences like this but about very large, extreme differences between the camera's default exposure and the correct one.

For instance, if I preferred thar photo the way I edited it and the camera gave me what you seem to prefer, this thread wouldn't exist. Metering is nit supposed to be perfect or totally automatic without any need for user intervention.

My concern is cases like that very first photo in the first post, which I think is significantly underexposed to a point that in many cases a photo that underexposed would be difficult or impossible to salvage. To reiterate again I expect even this level of underexposure *sometimes* from a cameras meter and for the user to need to make adjustments to avoid this kind of underexposure at times. I've just found it to be *most* of the time and without a discernable rhyme or reason for when it does it and when it doesn't, which is why I asked the question.

 

[SCoombs]

The big factor for me here is that I have found the metering to fairly consistently be a lot darker than I think it should be. If we're just talking about the metering not being perfect I'd expect a relatively even tendency to both over and underexpose.

Consistent metering is a good thing. You can adapt & adjust to results that are predictable.

Actually I think part of why I posted is that even though it tends to underexpose on average, I still haven't been able to figure out a consistent pattern to understand how it's going to work.

For instance, in a series of shots I took to experiment and to consider using for a post on the topic (but which I never wound up posting) I set up some situations where I had someone standing with a dark wall behind them on one side and a very bright window on the other and I would position the frame so it was the person and the wall, then the person and the window, only to have it meter exactly the same either way.

If f-stop, shutter speed, or ISO is delegated to the camera for selection, it will choose settings producing an image in which the area being metered will have a middle grey lightness. Unless the camera is prevented for some reason from using the setting its algorithm has chosen, the meter will always read, 0. The delegated setting(s) will change but the meter reading won't.

Fujifilm cameras don't even have a true lightness meter display when one of the three settings is delegated. The display shows the exposure compensation (EC) setting.

An in-camera lightness meter will often display something other than 0 when the camera is in full manual mode with the photographer choosing exposure settings and ISO. It's performerance that can be highly useful. For example when doing bird photography on a sunny morning, I'll often meter off a field of straw-huen grass. If the reading is +2/3 stop from on-meter, I know most birds will look good at those settings.

I'm not talking about the whether it shows 0 or +/- whatever on the meter. I'm talking about what exposure the camera chooses to use.

For example, consider the following two photos:





In this case, it behaves exactly as I'd expect: in manual mode with auto-ISO, the camera chose ISO 1000 for the first shot without the window in frame, but once the window is in frame and so the overall scene is brighter, it chooses ISO 720.

...but then consider this case:





The camera chooses ISO 4500 both when the bright window is taking up a substantial portion of the frame and when the somewhat darker molding with the extremely dark, black fireplace is taking up a similar portion of the frame. In fact, in the second shot the rest of the frame is brighter, too: there is more of the relatively brighter wall and less of the relatively darker chair.
Then we have the opposite extreme:





In this case the frame in the second photo is very clearly much, much brighter overall - it's really not close - yet it's the brighter frame that gets the higher ISO.

Your last example, with the yellow shirt, does seem to be Matrix metering doing it's calculations. The shirt brightness is just about exactly the same in both photos, and the nose is just slightly darker in the scene with the bright window included.

I guess the matrix calc decided that the background was less important in these two images.

From my Hogan Z6 iii guide:

The one thing that is a constant to watch for is this: at default
settings the system is optimized to watch for faces and skin tones,
and adjust partly based on that. If you have a person being focused
on in a scene, the Scene Recognition System used by the matrix
meter optimizes exposure based on that face, regardless of what the
background exposure might be. Even turning Custom Setting #B4
off to cancel the face detection priority for exposure, the Z6 III will
still see skin tones in the focus area, and use that some in its
calculations.

He also says that the exposure calculations use the lens focus distance to help decide if it's the subject is close to the camera, or the focus is far away, like a landscape. Each get different exposure calculations.

That's why it's named matrix: it evaluates the scene using brightness distribution, color, composition, and focus distance.

Yes, this all makes sense of course. Unfortunately it seems to make it very difficult to adequately anticipate how it will meter a situation and to be make pre-emptive adjustments. For instance, you it seems hard to reliably decide, "I need to change the EC for this next shot because of the bridal gown and the background," because the system might calculate things in some unexpected way, or it might pick up on the face or it might not, etc. and all of these could mean very different things for what adjustment you need to make.

Your pictures look very good on my screens !

If you want total control, M mode without auto iso and spot metering and wb determination using a know surface ( eg https://www.xrite.com/categories/ca...-classic-family/colorchecker-passport-photo-2 )

or

using a lightmeter for incident metering ( eg https://global.sekonic.com/sekonic-l-208-twinmate-analog-light-meter/ ) should allow that ....

But i don't think that is what you want to do.

I use full manual for very controlled shoots in relatively constant lighting. For things where lighting and background and other elements are changing frequently - like at an event or trying to take a low patience kid around for portraits in different places or sports or wildlife, I usually use some kind of automation.

I've also tried using a color checker or other surface like paper to do preset white balance but that has been disastrous and almost always results in a white balance that has everything looking very sickly, Listerine yellow.

 

[Bill Ferris]

The big factor for me here is that I have found the metering to fairly consistently be a lot darker than I think it should be. If we're just talking about the metering not being perfect I'd expect a relatively even tendency to both over and underexpose.

Consistent metering is a good thing. You can adapt & adjust to results that are predictable.

Actually I think part of why I posted is that even though it tends to underexpose on average, I still haven't been able to figure out a consistent pattern to understand how it's going to work.

For instance, in a series of shots I took to experiment and to consider using for a post on the topic (but which I never wound up posting) I set up some situations where I had someone standing with a dark wall behind them on one side and a very bright window on the other and I would position the frame so it was the person and the wall, then the person and the window, only to have it meter exactly the same either way.

If f-stop, shutter speed, or ISO is delegated to the camera for selection, it will choose settings producing an image in which the area being metered will have a middle grey lightness. Unless the camera is prevented for some reason from using the setting its algorithm has chosen, the meter will always read, 0. The delegated setting(s) will change but the meter reading won't.

Fujifilm cameras don't even have a true lightness meter display when one of the three settings is delegated. The display shows the exposure compensation (EC) setting.

An in-camera lightness meter will often display something other than 0 when the camera is in full manual mode with the photographer choosing exposure settings and ISO. It's performerance that can be highly useful. For example when doing bird photography on a sunny morning, I'll often meter off a field of straw-huen grass. If the reading is +2/3 stop from on-meter, I know most birds will look good at those settings.

I'm not talking about the whether it shows 0 or +/- whatever on the meter. I'm talking about what exposure the camera chooses to use.

For example, consider the following two photos:





In this case, it behaves exactly as I'd expect: in manual mode with auto-ISO, the camera chose ISO 1000 for the first shot without the window in frame, but once the window is in frame and so the overall scene is brighter, it chooses ISO 720.

Of course, adjustments to ISO so not change exposure. The f-stop and shutter speed you manually chose determine that.

...but then consider this case:





The camera chooses ISO 4500 both when the bright window is taking up a substantial portion of the frame and when the somewhat darker molding with the extremely dark, black fireplace is taking up a similar portion of the frame. In fact, in the second shot the rest of the frame is brighter, too: there is more of the relatively brighter wall and less of the relatively darker chair.

Where was the focus point? If the selected focus point(s) covered your son, the camera did what you wanted it to do...choose a middle grey image lightness for the subject.

Then we have the opposite extreme:





In this case the frame in the second photo is very clearly much, much brighter overall - it's really not close - yet it's the brighter frame that gets the higher ISO.

Again, where was the focus point? If covering your son, the camera chose an image lightness for the subject... that's good engineering design on Nikon's part.

The difference between ISO 3200 and 3600 indicates a trivial 1/6th stop in image lightness adjustment in how the image is processed.

Rather than obsess over the camera's choice of ISO, I will again encourage you to focus on the visual appearance of the subject in the EVF. You've locked in exposure (and by extension the total light and noise visibility in the image) through your choice of f-stop and shutter speed. What does the specific ISO matter so long as the subject has a pleasing lightness?

--
Bill Ferris Photography
Flagstaff, AZ

 

[SCoombs]

The big factor for me here is that I have found the metering to fairly consistently be a lot darker than I think it should be. If we're just talking about the metering not being perfect I'd expect a relatively even tendency to both over and underexpose.

Consistent metering is a good thing. You can adapt & adjust to results that are predictable.

Actually I think part of why I posted is that even though it tends to underexpose on average, I still haven't been able to figure out a consistent pattern to understand how it's going to work.

For instance, in a series of shots I took to experiment and to consider using for a post on the topic (but which I never wound up posting) I set up some situations where I had someone standing with a dark wall behind them on one side and a very bright window on the other and I would position the frame so it was the person and the wall, then the person and the window, only to have it meter exactly the same either way.

If f-stop, shutter speed, or ISO is delegated to the camera for selection, it will choose settings producing an image in which the area being metered will have a middle grey lightness. Unless the camera is prevented for some reason from using the setting its algorithm has chosen, the meter will always read, 0. The delegated setting(s) will change but the meter reading won't.

Fujifilm cameras don't even have a true lightness meter display when one of the three settings is delegated. The display shows the exposure compensation (EC) setting.

An in-camera lightness meter will often display something other than 0 when the camera is in full manual mode with the photographer choosing exposure settings and ISO. It's performerance that can be highly useful. For example when doing bird photography on a sunny morning, I'll often meter off a field of straw-huen grass. If the reading is +2/3 stop from on-meter, I know most birds will look good at those settings.

I'm not talking about the whether it shows 0 or +/- whatever on the meter. I'm talking about what exposure the camera chooses to use.

For example, consider the following two photos:





In this case, it behaves exactly as I'd expect: in manual mode with auto-ISO, the camera chose ISO 1000 for the first shot without the window in frame, but once the window is in frame and so the overall scene is brighter, it chooses ISO 720.

Of course, adjustments to ISO so not change exposure. The f-stop and shutter speed you manually chose determine that.

...but then consider this case:





The camera chooses ISO 4500 both when the bright window is taking up a substantial portion of the frame and when the somewhat darker molding with the extremely dark, black fireplace is taking up a similar portion of the frame. In fact, in the second shot the rest of the frame is brighter, too: there is more of the relatively brighter wall and less of the relatively darker chair.

Where was the focus point? If the selected focus point(s) covered your son, the camera did what you wanted it to do...choose a middle grey image lightness for the subject.

Then we have the opposite extreme:





In this case the frame in the second photo is very clearly much, much brighter overall - it's really not close - yet it's the brighter frame that gets the higher ISO.

Again, where was the focus point? If covering your son, the camera chose an image lightness for the subject... that's good engineering design on Nikon's part.

The difference between ISO 3200 and 3600 indicates a trivial 1/6th stop in image lightness adjustment in how the image is processed.

Rather than obsess over the camera's choice of ISO, I will again encourage you to focus on the visual appearance of the subject in the EVF. You've locked in exposure (and by extension the total light and noise visibility in the image) through your choice of f-stop and shutter speed. What does the specific ISO matter so long as the subject has a pleasing lightness?

The only reason at all that I was citing the ISO is that in these cases it was what was left to the metering system to adjust, so I was using it as an indicator of what exposure the camera thought was appropriate given different situations.

To reiterate what I said to Michael, my concern or question here is not at all over minor differences or exposure "misses" that can just as easily be questions of taste. Rather, go back and look at the very first image I posted in my original post at the top of the thread. That's the kind of drastic underexposure I'm trying to discuss here, and in particular to discuss it in the context of trying to understand how to anticipate and avoid it.

Take note that you very rightly have honed in on the fact that the camera seems to have exposed for the faces in the examples I posted just above, but in that other image with a much more prominent face/subject it seems to have exposed for the sky, leaving the face underexposed somewhat badly.

Generally, I'd say that the underexposure in that first shot happens >50% of the time when outdoors, whereas when indoors it seems to follow the logic you highlighted in your reply here.

 

[Bill Ferris]

Yes, this all makes sense of course. Unfortunately it seems to make it very difficult to adequately anticipate how it will meter a situation and to be make pre-emptive adjustments. For instance, you it seems hard to reliably decide, "I need to change the EC for this next shot because of the bridal gown and the background," because the system might calculate things in some unexpected way, or it might pick up on the face or it might not, etc. and all of these could mean very different things for what adjustment you need to make.

This is a scenario where going full manual may be in your interest. If you don't trust the camera to make the choice you'd make, take back control. Even if the camera makes a good choice 90-95% of the time, are those 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 outcomes enough to be an annoyance? If so, going full manual may be the better option.

Suppose you're in a room with good widow light illuminating the bride. You've chosen an f-stop for depth of field and a shutter speed to freeze movement & lock in exposure. You dial in an ISO to ensure the wedding dress and skin tones look good for the first photo.

Then, you reposition so the bride's against a darker background. If the bride is in the same light, you don't need to change a thing. She and her gown will look exactly the same at the settings you used for the first photo. The background will be darker - maybe even nearly black - but that's why you chose it; you wanted that look.

If the light on her will be different, it's up to you to decide if the adjustment should be to exposure (f-stop or shutter speed) or to ISO. If ISO would climb too high in the new light (indicating a weak exposure being used), do you have room to adjust f-stop or shutter speed without compromising your desired depth of field or rendering of movement? Or is an adjustment to ISO the better option? Yes the exposure is weaker but not enough to prevent making a quality image. Once you recompose, you make the needed adjustment according to your evaluation of the setting change that achieves your desired look while maintaining image quality. Make the photo.

The TL;DR version is, rather than adjust EC and wait to see if the camera responds as you hope, take control, adapt & adjust as you think is best. It takes no longer to change an exposure setting or ISO than to change EC. You're not losing any time but are retaining control over image quality.

It's an option to consider

 

[SCoombs]

Yes, this all makes sense of course. Unfortunately it seems to make it very difficult to adequately anticipate how it will meter a situation and to be make pre-emptive adjustments. For instance, you it seems hard to reliably decide, "I need to change the EC for this next shot because of the bridal gown and the background," because the system might calculate things in some unexpected way, or it might pick up on the face or it might not, etc. and all of these could mean very different things for what adjustment you need to make.

This is a scenario where going full manual may be in your interest. If you don't trust the camera to make the choice you'd make, take back control. Even if the camera makes a good choice 90-95% of the time, are those 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 outcomes enough to be an annoyance? If so, going full manual may be the better option.

Suppose you're in a room with good widow light illuminating the bride. You've chosen an f-stop for depth of field and a shutter speed to freeze movement & lock in exposure. You dial in an ISO to ensure the wedding dress and skin tones look good for the first photo.

Then, you reposition so the bride's against a darker background. If the bride is in the same light, you don't need to change a thing. She and her gown will look exactly the same at the settings you used for the first photo. The background will be darker - maybe even nearly black - but that's why you chose it; you wanted that look.

If the light on her will be different, it's up to you to decide if the adjustment should be to exposure (f-stop or shutter speed) or to ISO. If ISO would climb too high in the new light (indicating a weak exposure being used), do you have room to adjust f-stop or shutter speed without compromising your desired depth of field or rendering of movement? Or is an adjustment to ISO the better option? Yes the exposure is weaker but not enough to prevent making a quality image. Once you recompose, you make the needed adjustment according to your evaluation of the setting change that achieves your desired look while maintaining image quality. Make the photo.

The TL;DR version is, rather than adjust EC and wait to see if the camera responds as you hope, take control, adapt & adjust as you think is best. It takes no longer to change an exposure setting or ISO than to change EC. You're not losing any time but are retaining control over image quality.

It's an option to consider

I do use full manual for very controlled shoots in relatively constant lighting. For things where lighting and background and other elements are changing frequently - like at an event or trying to take a low patience kid around for portraits in different places or sports or wildlife, I usually use some kind of automation.

For instance, doing staged photos of a bride is a situation where full manual would be useful. For candids of the bridal party screwing around this is when letting the camera meter things would be more important.

For example, here's a case where I think full manual would be pretty rough: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19Zj1vbdgh/

Weirdly, in spite of the issues I've mentioned with the metering in more "normal" situations, it always seems to nail the exposure for much messier lighting situations like this.

 

[michaeladawson]

Do you do mail order prints or do you have a local shop where you have them done? Does the printing service you use have any .icc profiles for their printing and the paper they use?

It is not local. They do have profiles available I believe, but the truth is it's not entirely clear to me how to use them because the particularities of my own monitor are at play, too.

In other words, my monitor is calibrated. If I use the lab's profile, it would replace my calibration with the lab's - but that new calibration wasn't made to take into account my own hardware, so I'm not really sure how it is supposed to work.

You don't apply the lab's calibration to your monitor. It's applied to the photo. At least in my experience. In Photoshop you go to the Print dialog and you choose the .icc profile to use for the print. Check the preview box. You won't actually print, of course.

The other way is to go into Photoshop's View -> Proof Setup menu and choose the print lab's .icc profile. Now you can toggle the profile preview on and off with Ctrl-Y.

In any case, I generally find the lab's colors to be pretty close to what I see on my minitor.

Your initial thread was about the exposure calculations done by the camera and that they were consistently too dark for your taste. I can't answer the question of how matrix metering works to any level of detail. I find with my cameras it overexposes just as often as it underexposes. But I don't photograph people any longer. When I did it was always with flash and I was in manual mode and controlled exposure through the flash.

In the end, it could be that you simply prefer brighter photos than Nikon dials into the camera or it could be the camera needs adjustment. I suppose one test for that is to use multiple cameras and see if they all behave the same way.

Let me try to get back to basics here, because I think in part the discussion has gotten into a but of a tangent over the differences between red channel values that are 10 points higher than one person prefers or 10 points lower than another prefers.

That's what I was intending to do with the above couple of paragraphs. Unfortunately, I can't explain the details of how matrix metering works.

From my experience, it gets it wrong at least half the time. By wrong, I mean that it is not optimal. But it is equally wrong in either the over or under directions. It is usually within 2/3 of a stop either way. 2/3 under is not a huge deal. I will either dial in some EC on the spot or ignore it and fix in post. 2/3 over is of course a bigger deal. For that I have to dial in some EC on the spot.

Bottom line for me is that I am probably dialing in some EC at least half the time. I know from experience that anytime I have sky or clouds or a window in the frame I will probably be dialing in some EC. But as I said, it seems to get it equally wrong plus or minus.

I can't say the camera is getting it wrong. The algorithm simply calculates something that it thinks is the best "compromise" for the conditions. And upwards of half the time I don't like its compromise and I have to dial in EC.

I sometimes wonder if I would be better off simply using center-weighted metering most of the time. Although I'm pretty sure that center-weight would result in totally blown out skies on cloudy days.

Originally my question here was not about relatively minor differences like this but about very large, extreme differences between the camera's default exposure and the correct one.

For instance, if I preferred thar photo the way I edited it and the camera gave me what you seem to prefer, this thread wouldn't exist. Metering is nit supposed to be perfect or totally automatic without any need for user intervention.

My concern is cases like that very first photo in the first post, which I think is significantly underexposed to a point that in many cases a photo that underexposed would be difficult or impossible to salvage. To reiterate again I expect even this level of underexposure *sometimes* from a cameras meter and for the user to need to make adjustments to avoid this kind of underexposure at times. I've just found it to be *most* of the time and without a discernable rhyme or reason for when it does it and when it doesn't, which is why I asked the question.

If your photos are consistently off in one direction I would certainly do some further testing. Start with photos of a completely monochrome wall or completely blue sky, for instance. Do you get a single spike in the middle of the histogram?

It's possible your camera needs adjustment. If not, then I think you are left with dialing in a permanent exposure correction factor.

 

[michaeladawson]

I've also tried using a color checker or other surface like paper to do preset white balance but that has been disastrous and almost always results in a white balance that has everything looking very sickly, Listerine yellow.

I've never had good luck with a ColorChecker for doing a preset. ColorChecker will work for me if I put it in a sample image and then use it in post to set the WB and all the photos shot under the same condition.

White paper often has whiteners which result in a bluish tint which then translates to a yellow cast in photos when used to do preset WB. Although I can't say as I've ever seen it be that bad.

Expo Disc has been reliable for me with outdoor photos. I can't remember how it fared for me with indoor lighting.

 

[Bill Ferris]

The big factor for me here is that I have found the metering to fairly consistently be a lot darker than I think it should be. If we're just talking about the metering not being perfect I'd expect a relatively even tendency to both over and underexpose.

Consistent metering is a good thing. You can adapt & adjust to results that are predictable.

Actually I think part of why I posted is that even though it tends to underexpose on average, I still haven't been able to figure out a consistent pattern to understand how it's going to work.

For instance, in a series of shots I took to experiment and to consider using for a post on the topic (but which I never wound up posting) I set up some situations where I had someone standing with a dark wall behind them on one side and a very bright window on the other and I would position the frame so it was the person and the wall, then the person and the window, only to have it meter exactly the same either way.

If f-stop, shutter speed, or ISO is delegated to the camera for selection, it will choose settings producing an image in which the area being metered will have a middle grey lightness. Unless the camera is prevented for some reason from using the setting its algorithm has chosen, the meter will always read, 0. The delegated setting(s) will change but the meter reading won't.

Fujifilm cameras don't even have a true lightness meter display when one of the three settings is delegated. The display shows the exposure compensation (EC) setting.

An in-camera lightness meter will often display something other than 0 when the camera is in full manual mode with the photographer choosing exposure settings and ISO. It's performerance that can be highly useful. For example when doing bird photography on a sunny morning, I'll often meter off a field of straw-huen grass. If the reading is +2/3 stop from on-meter, I know most birds will look good at those settings.

I'm not talking about the whether it shows 0 or +/- whatever on the meter. I'm talking about what exposure the camera chooses to use.

For example, consider the following two photos:





In this case, it behaves exactly as I'd expect: in manual mode with auto-ISO, the camera chose ISO 1000 for the first shot without the window in frame, but once the window is in frame and so the overall scene is brighter, it chooses ISO 720.

Of course, adjustments to ISO so not change exposure. The f-stop and shutter speed you manually chose determine that.

...but then consider this case:





The camera chooses ISO 4500 both when the bright window is taking up a substantial portion of the frame and when the somewhat darker molding with the extremely dark, black fireplace is taking up a similar portion of the frame. In fact, in the second shot the rest of the frame is brighter, too: there is more of the relatively brighter wall and less of the relatively darker chair.

Where was the focus point? If the selected focus point(s) covered your son, the camera did what you wanted it to do...choose a middle grey image lightness for the subject.

Then we have the opposite extreme:





In this case the frame in the second photo is very clearly much, much brighter overall - it's really not close - yet it's the brighter frame that gets the higher ISO.

Again, where was the focus point? If covering your son, the camera chose an image lightness for the subject... that's good engineering design on Nikon's part.

The difference between ISO 3200 and 3600 indicates a trivial 1/6th stop in image lightness adjustment in how the image is processed.

Rather than obsess over the camera's choice of ISO, I will again encourage you to focus on the visual appearance of the subject in the EVF. You've locked in exposure (and by extension the total light and noise visibility in the image) through your choice of f-stop and shutter speed. What does the specific ISO matter so long as the subject has a pleasing lightness?

The only reason at all that I was citing the ISO is that in these cases it was what was left to the metering system to adjust, so I was using it as an indicator of what exposure the camera thought was appropriate given different situations.

To reiterate what I said to Michael, my concern or question here is not at all over minor differences or exposure "misses" that can just as easily be questions of taste. Rather, go back and look at the very first image I posted in my original post at the top of the thread. That's the kind of drastic underexposure I'm trying to discuss here, and in particular to discuss it in the context of trying to understand how to anticipate and avoid it.

Take note that you very rightly have honed in on the fact that the camera seems to have exposed for the faces in the examples I posted just above, but in that other image with a much more prominent face/subject it seems to have exposed for the sky, leaving the face underexposed somewhat badly.

Generally, I'd say that the underexposure in that first shot happens >50% of the time when outdoors, whereas when indoors it seems to follow the logic you highlighted in your reply here.

Here's a pro tip: watch your background ;-)

All camera systems are engineered to make objective, data-driven settings choices to produce an image in which the metered element will have a middle grey lightness. Regardless of the exposure mode in use, the user also plays a role. That's the wildcard.

If the photographer chooses light, composition and a background that challenges an automated system's odds of choosing settings the photographer would choose, there's a good chance the photo won't look as they'd wish. In other words, yes, the photographer can make choices that will limit a camera's odds of making a photo they'll be pleased with.

If complex backgrounds in high dynamic range lighting is your aesthetic, I recommend you take control and shoot full manual. It's the best way to guarantee the settings used will produce a photo to your liking.

Of course, you can continue to shoot manual plus auto ISO. We're all free to use the exposure mode we prefer. If that's your choice, keep in mind that the photos you enjoy making will occasionally require an EC adjustment to force the selection of an ISO resulting in the subject having a lightness that pleases you.

--
Bill Ferris Photography
Flagstaff, AZ

 

[Bill Ferris]

For example, here's a case where I think full manual would be pretty rough: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19Zj1vbdgh/

Weirdly, in spite of the issues I've mentioned with the metering in more "normal" situations, it always seems to nail the exposure for much messier lighting situations like this.

Looks pretty straightforward to me. Then again, I've been shooting portraits, landscapes, wildlife, birds and sports in full manual for six years. There's no photographic situation in which I don't use that mode.

That said, we're all free to choose and use the exposure mode giving us the highest confidence in getting the results we want. In situations where I'd adjust ISO, f-stop, shutter speed you'll adjust EC, f-stop or shutter speed.