There are several things I would like to share in this blog.
Recently, I held a photo lesson in a park near a student’s home. The photos used were taken just after sunset. With this type of lighting situation, it is difficult to get both the sky and the foreground properly exposed. So, the problem I faced was what metering mode is best?
(See my metering modes blog for more information)
In this lighting situation, I saw two possible metering modes:
Evaluative/Matrix/ESP/Pattern or
Center- Weighted metering modes.
The histogram is a very useful tool which shows the range of luminosity for a given photo. Your camera is able to display a histogram on it’s LCD screen. See your camera’s owners manual for details on how to display the histogram on your LCD. The histograms I show here are from Adobe Lightroom. For more information see my blog on Histograms from November 2016.
While in the field, I used the histogram displayed on my camera’s LCD. (All photos were taken in RAW. Remember, your camera’s LCD displays a JPEG of the photo. I use RAW, as I want to retain all the information the camera sensor captures.
I’m going to present the process I used to achieve the best possible exposure in the camera. First, I used Evaluative/Matrix/ESP/Pattern Metering mode. The actual nomenclature depends on what brand of camera you own.
When I looked at the histogram (red ellipse) for the Evaluative/Matrix/ESP/Pattern photo, the foreground is too dark and the sky is about right. I know from previous photos I’ve taken where the sky is brighter than the foreground, Center-Weighted metering sometimes can do a better job.
By using the Center-Weighted metering, the sky is too bright, but the foreground is better. So what if I used Center-Weighted metering with 
Exposure Compensation?
So next, I reduced the exposure by neg 1 (-1EV). This I know will darken the sky, and hopefully retain some of the brightness I attained in the foreground.
When I look at the histogram above, it looks very much like the Evaluative/Matrix /ESP/Pattern photo I took at the start. Why? In simple terms, the overall difference between the bright areas to darker areas (i.e. dynamic range ) is too great for my camera’s sensor to capture what my eye can see. So what’s next? Given this dynamic range, I knew I needed to do some post processing when I got home.
At home, I chose the Evaluative/Matrix/ESP/Pattern photo and adjusted the shadows slider to the right to make the foreground brighter.
When I chose the Center-Weighted -1EV and made the same shadow slide adjustment, the result is sightly better in the foreground.
The histogram is a good guide to getting the best exposure possible. Here I believe the Center-Weighted -1EV did a little better job when I look at the histogram and see the green channel is sightly brighter, i.e. moved to the right when you compare the two histograms, than in the Evaluative/Matrix/ESP/Pattern corrected photo.
With today’s digital cameras some post processing is sometimes required. I presented my quick fix process in the blog on Haze Removal. When I apply all the same techniques on the photo above the end result is:
I believe this supports my conclusion, from my earlier blog on metering modes. Center-Weighted metering is usually better with bright sky and darker foreground lighting.
Here’s two additional articles you could find useful:
5 Exercises to help you better understand Histograms
How-to-take-great-photos-of-your-Christmas-tree/
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© Tom Wiggins Photography 2015-2023