NIKON ACADEMY – CONTINUED

(over 1000 in the most advanced cameras). A reading is taken from each zone and then analysed. Over many years, Nikon engineers have studied the colour, area of coverage, focus distance, contrast, shadows and highlight information and exposure characteristics of over 30,000 real-world photographic images. All of this data is used as a reference source to build the exposure calculations that underpin the technology behind Matrix metering.

Matrix is the only metering option in some auto shooting modes, and you would need to select either Program, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority or Manual mode to use the other metering modes.

Centre-weighted metering biases the exposure toward the centre of the frame and doesn’t take focusing or the distribution of light into account, it just assumes that the main subject you want to photograph is in the middle of the frame. Historically this was the main way of metering, but it has been made redundant by Matrix metering.

Spot metering is a much simpler mode, it just takes a light reading from the area surrounding the active focus point and ignores everything else in the picture. This makes it the most precise metering mode available on the camera but also the hardest to use as you have to be very careful with the spot in the frame that you choose to take the reading from.

Recent Nikon cameras also have the addition of a Highlighted-weighted metering mode, which further extends the accuracy of the spot metering mode to ensure that details are retained in the brightest parts of a photograph.