Spot on

Metering is a mystery to me, so I have the camera on spot meter all the time. Is this right? Kirsty Unwin

As a general rule of thumb, if you want a metering mode that will give you the best average of a scene,

I’d suggest that you opt for Evaluative (Canon), Matrix (Nikon), ESP (Olympus) or Multi (Sony, Panasonic, Fujifilm). These metering modes take a reading from various places within the scene you’ve framed up and give you a general reading that provides a relatively accurate exposure – although you may need a little of exposure compensation.

Spot metering doesn’t work like this. It allows you to pick a specific point with the scene and meter from that. For example, if you have a bright object in the scene and you consider that part the most important, take a spot meter reading from it and expose accordingly. This might mean other parts of the scene become darker in your image.

In many cases, the spot meter point is within the very central area of the viewfinder so if you are taking a reading from an area that’s not dead centre you’d have to lock the exposure it gives you, then recompose and focus before taking your shot. Some DSLRs and CSCs now also allow a spot meter reading to be taken from the active AF point, which gets round this problem.

A spot meter reading can be useful in some circumstances, but for general work you’d be better off using Evaluative/Matrix/Multi/ESP.