Light Metering With The HS20 Pt 2 .. difficult scenes

Light Metering With The HS20 Pt 1 .. general scenes

 EV Multi

0 EV Spot

0 EV Average

As we saw in the first section, there is a consistency about how the light meter in the HS20 works. For general scene work its easy to see that average metering gives the best overall balance and multi metering gives reasonable results. What is highlighted here is just how much difference spot metering displays. This mode is to my way of thinking most useful for telephoto work and where you need a centrally lit area to be the main focus as in some macro work. This isn't a hard and fast rule but the differences in metering can have a dramatic effect on the overall IQ of an image and how well the AF can achieve focus. Especially so when it comes to poorly lit areas.

-0.3 Ev Multi

-0.3 EV Spot

In the next series of images,of my left knee as it happens,in bright light the metering differences become even more extreme. This is a hard task for the metering to deal with as there is a large amount of highlight to overcome if we wish to see any background detail at all.

-0.3 EV Average

We start with 0.0 EV. As you can see, in the multi metered image there is a good amount of background detail but the knee and 
steering wheel have badly blown highlights. In the spot metered image the correct exposure is used and highlight controlled, however almost all other detail is lost.

-0.7 Ev Multi

-0.7 Ev Spot

-0.7 Ev Average

In the average metered 
image some background detail is maintain and the exposure of the knee and steering wheel shows less blown highlight. PP work with the spot image will provide the best chance of a workable image as its easier to lift shadow detail, whereas blown highlight detail is gone for good. The same conditions apply when more and more  negative EV is applied. Spot metering consistently gives better highlight control, but loses the shadow detail, while average maintains some blown highlight but more shadow detail. In almost all cases multi metering supplies slightly better shadow detail but suffers from large blown highlight areas. In all cases I would be looking at PP'ing either the spot or averaged metered images as you simply cant get back the highlights from the multi images.

This is why I say to avoid the Multi Metering mode if you can as it has the propensity to continually overexpose the highlight areas in photos, and when used with the Auto modes in the HS20 this can tend to have very nasty consequences at times, not to mention its rather unreliable between similar shots as well.