The In-camera Lightness Meter

Just ignore him.

not my new sony a74. if i shoot just a white skirt with nothing else in the frame the skirt is white and why wouldnt it be ? i shoot in a pure white studio the images dont came out grey.

Are they UniWB Zebras?

I've tried fooling about with picture profiles (with UniWB) to make the histogram and blinkies close to RAW clipping, and I can get quite close, most of the time, but it's not really reliable.

I've always wondered who breeds zebras with diagonal stripes all over, rather than just on the rump. Is it a subspecies of the Plains Zebra, or something else?

In the absence of true RAW exposure indicators, Iliah Borg is right that bracketing is the only way to be sure.

Sounds like Sony has done something with their metering to overcome this very common challenge with the way evaluative metering traditionally works.

Your post reminds of meetings at work when we have to roll out a new policy or process for a standard situation that comes up frequently. There’s always one person that brings up a one off scenario and wants to make the whole meeting about their one off.

If your camera doesn’t work this way, then Bills post doesn’t apply to you. Simple. Maybe start a post in a Sony sub forum extolling the virtues of Sony’s new metering technology.

You can also use spot metering on your subject in a snowy scene and mitigate the 18% gray bias. But that doesn’t make what Bill said any less true for the 90+ % of photographers who never take their camera off evaluative metering.

Also, if you’re shooting in a studio with full manual controls, it’s likely doesn’t apply to you either. All of your settings are specific to you lighting.

i will post where and when i like. he questioned my experience. the best part about this new forum is its not camera brand against camera brand. if sony have added AI to the metering thats great.

your speculation exceeds your experience.

I don’t dispute that one bit 😂

Some of you just like to argue. 😁

i thought i was still on DPReview 🤣

my 12 yold olympus xz1 shoots a white dress the same as the sony ,

I’d be interested to see the black paper/white paper experiment with Sony. Rules would be to:

• make sure the paper fills the entire sensor
• shoot in an auto setting
• use the same metering method for both and meter the same spot or area
• no changes to the lighting between shots
• no exposure compensation

I’d be interested to see if you aren’t really employing some technique to overcome this very standard issue just to fill your day with another fun internet debate.

That said, you don’t have to. This will be my last post on the subject.

I have left dprevived 😊

Don is obviously trolling and telling lies again because he won't post the raw files as requested before.

Not for action :)

The histogram is useful for analyzing test exposures before the action starts. But isn't a practical real-time resource in the moment. That's OK because it's not necessary. The lightness meter reading on a reference confirms the degree to which the ambient light level either has or hasn't changed.

Zone System-like tone placement works fin for JPEGs, but not so well for optimum raws.

That's a key point, For action, use the histogram to figure out the EC that you'll need for the series, then let the meter take over.

UniWB affects the zebras, too. But these days I'm in the studio and have plenty of time, and I look at the raws when I'm doing the setup if it's not a situation that I've encountered previously.

One thing missing from this is the metering mode in use. The article says it will ignore metering modes but, surely, that isn't possible - the scale used will show different values for the same exact scene depending on which metering mode is in use and where the camera is pointed (assuming a normal scene with a range of tonalities). - I think this is done in an attempt to simplify the explanation but I think it could lead to more confusion. If you have a particular aesthetic outcome in mind (and I think you should) then you need to know what metering mode is in play and therefore what the scale is telling you and react accordingly. This article tacitly acknowledges this when it uses the phrase "metering off". It speaks of filling the frame with a particular tonality but in the real world, that is frequently not possible. Also whether you fill the whole frame or just a part of it in order to measure depends directly on the metering mode in use. Metering modes are central to interpreting what the scale is telling you.

Yes, the metering mode (and where within the scene the camera is metering) affects the reading. My main points, however, are that a meter reading of 0 doesn't reliably indicate a good exposure - let alone optimal - and that the meter isn't strictly an indicator of exposure. The metering mode doesn't change either. I think a separate post on the topic of the use scenarios for the various metering modes would be a great contribution to this forum. It's not something I would write as I'm almost always in center-weighted metering mode. It's the kind of post that should really come from someone who uses different modes in different situations and can speak from experience about the pros & cons.