Should you use Spot Metering for Wildlife Photography?

hey guys this is janine from pangolin photo safaris and today i want to share with you my top three reasons why i personally think spot metering is not ideal for wildlife [Music] photography going out on safari my clients often ask me which metering mode i find most appropriate out in the field if you're not sure what metering mode is yet check out the tutorial down below first where sabine explains all the different metering modes making sure you understand all the pros and cons and how it works in a scenario like this i would generally advise all my clients to over expose the shot by at least plus one reason being the relatively dark hippo looks even darker in the bright white water in an overcast day and on evaluative metering or center-weighted metering your subject will turn out too dark however some clients do prefer to shoot on spot metering and in this scenario it would work perfectly well as you would meter of the dark part of the cheek right here and your camera would relatively brighten up the image in an appropriate manner you would see all the beautiful details and you get an amazing shot without having to over expose and put any further effort into your photograph so why not use a method that seems to work so well automatically especially when being fast in wildlife photography is of such essence reason number one is that our subject is not always evenly exposed looking at this fish needle as an example you can see that we have everything from a dark black to a medium brown into the bright white parts of the neck so depending on where you expose you'll get different results if we look at the quarry buster in turn right here if we would spot meat on the bird the camera would automatically overexpose and we get a fabulous result however with the bird and flight it is not so easy to keep your focus steady the new mirrorless cameras of canon might help you out that way but i haven't tried them yet in with the older dslr technology having the focus dead steady on the head isn't always possible so if you happen to focus and meter both of the head your bird will actually turn out rather dark reason being your whites are so bright that your camera wants to darken the image to avoid clipping the whites in turn if you happen to focus on the wing which is much more likely as it's a bigger surface area your camera will want to overexpose a little bit more in order to raise the dark tones in this scenario i've focused a meter of the head and you can see i have all the beautiful details of the white feathers nothing is burned however we clipped the black point instead you might think that fixing such minor problems in post-production should be rather easy but please keep in mind that raising the exposure in the dark area areas significantly increases your risk in having a lot of noise in turn focusing on the darker wings and metering of the darker wings clips your white point in the neck of the fish eagle and you lose all the details you have previously up here bracketing is also not necessarily an option because our animal is moving and we can't get enough shots in in time if you do enjoy these videos please don't forget to subscribe with the bell button below and you'll always get notified when we have new videos coming out on our channel even though you don't have such a stark contrast on many animals you will run into the very same problem if you have a side lit animal you will get an entirely different exposure by focusing on the right eye versus the left eye of the elephant my intention in this particular photograph was to darken the shadows so much so that they turn black on spot metering that would mean you would have to find the brightest part on the animals such as the tusk or the brighter temple here in order to make sure that your camera wants to darken the image as much as possible if you would focus in meter of the year instead you would get a nice and medium exposure if you focus in meter of the shady part you would probably burn the sunny bit of your face so all in all you would have to analyze the light conditions on this elephant face in a rapid speed to decide where to meter in order to get the desired exposure on the other hand you would want to focus on the eye at all times in order to get that part of the image sharp so you shouldn't really worry about your focus in order to achieve the right exposure in turn this puts you in a bit of a predicament here you see that spot metering is too volatile to be a steady companion when it comes to wildlife photography you will run into similar problems photographing an elephant such as this or even a scene like this if you want to keep this dark mood of the burnt land after the bushfire you will struggle when you focus in meter of the giraffe's head which is as much in the shadow as what the background is focusing on the head will brighten the entire image instead and you'll lose that natural feel for this burned land so you see there is quite a few scenarios where spot metering gives you a vast variety of results with the very same subject matter depending on where you focus and where you meter and you get changing results not knowing what you've really done wrong or why it is changing as you kept all the other settings identical reason number two you often meet it from the center while in wildlife photography we have to shift our focus point throughout the frame in photography we would like to have an eye on the composition of our subject and not always have a dead smack center in the middle in turn we can't focus in the middle and then shift our frame to the left because we often shoot on ai servo or afc with nikon in order to be able to track all the movement with the wildlife photography so instead of shifting your frame you'll be forced to shift your focus point towards your subject ideally towards the head if you now meter of the center of the dark green grass you will not get the right metering for this bird matter of fact is you will burn the bird terribly with a few cameras you can lock the metering point to your focus point but those are only the more professional camera bodies quite a few of the mirrorless cameras have the option but there is a big range of cameras out there that don't have the option on top of that you will have to activate it in most cameras as it's usually turned off according to factory settings you actually have to go into the menu here and change that looking at birds in flight this poses less of a problem because our focusing point is the fastest in the middle this is where the calculation effort is the least and in order to give our bird enough space within the frame and have a fast enough focusing point we often tend to have our focus dead smack center in the middle this allows us to meter straight off the bird get the right exposure and save a lot of time because we don't have to manually over expose but as soon as our subject is not centered in the middle we run the risk of metering the background instead and we get a completely wrong exposure especially if you're not aware of it it means that sometimes this subject is perfectly well exposed as it sits in the middle and sometimes it will be completely off and you might not know why that is the case reason number three is that you still have to play with your exposure regardless of being on spot even though spot metering will get you a nice neutral exposure when meted off the animal if you want to go and shoot a low-key image or a high key image your exposure will not be extreme enough so meteor of the squirrel will get a nice dark green background as the bush was in the shadow however by under exposing it significantly more we'll we will be able to turn the shadow into a black background and get a very artistic type of shot so despite being on spot metering you will still have to under expose by at least minus one minus 1.3 on evaluative metering that would have probably resulted in a minus 3.3 all the way to a minus four however you will still have to get to your exposure button the same holds for any high key shot if you want to burn your background on purpose and get that really nice charcoal looking black and white image you will have to overexpose regardless of being on spot metering so even though you are on spot metering don't think you can leave your exposure on xero the entire time if you have a creative side to yourself you will still have to play with your exposure so even though i gave you three reasons now why spot metering can be a bit dodgy in wildlife photography i don't really think there is a right and wrong there is so many settings available so you can find your preferred way of shooting however what i do suggest for everyone is to stick with the metering mode once you have decided for it reason being is that you learn how it behaves depending on the light condition and then you can get a better feeling for what settings your camera requires evaluative metering will be quite a bit more work for you because you have to use your exposure a lot more however spot metering proves to be quite a volatile metering mode which might give you results that don't make so much sense in retrospective because you can't even see your focus point in lightroom so sometimes you're not even sure where their focus points set and why the exposure now turned out as it did if you did enjoy this video please don't forget to like it and tell me what metering do you use do you use spot metering does it work for you and if so how do you get around these issues that i just mentioned i would love to hear i hope you have a great day bye bye

Channel: Pangolin Wildlife Photography

Views: 36,592

Rating: 4.9482274 out of 5

Keywords: spot metering for wildlife, spot metering for bird photography, spot metering, spot metering and focus point, spot metering canon, spot metering nikon, spot metering sony, spot metering tutorial, spot metering vs evaluative metering, spot metering vs matrix metering, centre weighted vs spot metering, wildlife photography for beginners, wildlife photography tips, wildlife photography tips for beginners, wildlife photography tutorials for beginners, pangolin photo safaris

Id: 7R_8In3qjls

Length: 12min 9sec (729 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 20 2021