Canon EOS 40D: Metering Mode

"Alright now we're going to move on and talk about selecting your light metering mode on the Canon 40D. There are four different modes, four different lighting situations or different shooting situations and I'm going to go through and talk about each one of those modes. So to select a light metering mode what you need to do is push the button that has a symbol, it kind of looks like an eyeball, next to a WB for white balance and what you’re going to do is select, go ahead and push that button on the top of your camera and then you'll be able to scroll through these different settings there, there's a square almost in the center of your LCD on the top of the camera which will indicate and tell you which light metering mode you are in. So let's go ahead and just talk about each one of these. The first mode we want to talk about is the evaluative mode and it the symbol for that mode just looks like a broken circle with a dot in the middle and that is a general purpose metering mode. It takes into account back light, it's good for portraits. It's a all purpose metering mode. The next mode is a partial metering mode and it is mostly center weighted. It would be good if the light behind your subject is way too bright and you just want to take the picture based on what your subject, the exposure you want for your subject. It will ignore much of the light at the edge of the frames. The next mode is spot metering mode and that mode is indicated by a single dot in the middle of your metering mode LCD indicator and that mode is very precise. You can focus the center censor on your camera and just point it at a particular spot on the image and it will take a metering value from that particular spot in your shot. If you want to there is one other metering mode and that is a center weighted average metering mode. That mode is indicated by an empty box. No circles or dots for this mode it is a center weighted mode and what it does is it takes a an accurate metering value from the very center of your shot. A very pin pointed value and then averages the light, light metering values from the center out. So it's it is definitely center weighted but will take into account at least acknowledge that there is a different lighting situation at the edges of your frame. So those are the three, those are the four major metering modes that you have to choose from on your Canon 40D."