However before Alan kicked off the discussion, he was able to welcome a number of potential new members to the club.
Further good news followed with confirmation that Dave Brennan has been able to secure the hire of a boat for this year’s Puffin Run on the 21st June. The Puffin Run has in the past proved to be one of the most popular events of the club year, involving a trip to Inner Farne and Staple Island when the islands become a riot of seabirds raising and feeding their chicks. These include the iconic Puffins, the aggressively protective Arctic Terns and not forgetting Guillemots, Cormorants, Shags, Fulmars, Razor Bills, the list is endless.
The cost will be a mere £40.00 per person for what promises to be a fantastic opportunity to home your skills in photographing wildlife.
In addition the date of the visit to Caernarvon and Snowdonia was confirmed as from Thursday 8th May for three nights until Sunday 11th.
Accommodation for the trip will cost £116.00 per person plus an additional £25.00 to include the three breakfasts.
Then onto metering.
Alan opened, explaining how knowing how metering works and what each of the metering modes does is important in photography, because it helps photographers control their exposure with minimum effort and take better pictures in unusual lighting situations.
The first mode discussed was evaluative which works by dividing the frame into multiple zones, which are then all analyzed on individual basis for light and dark tones. One of the key factors that affects matrix metering, is where the camera focus point is set to. After reading information from all individual zones, the metering system looks at where you focused within the frame and marks it more important than all other zones. There are many other variables used in the equation, which differ from manufacturer to manufacturer. Nikon, for example, also compares image data to a database of thousands of pictures for exposure calculation.
Next was center-weighted metering which evaluates the light in the middle of the frame and its surroundings and ignores the corners. Compared to matrix metering, center-weighted metering does not look at the focus point you select and only evaluates the middle area of the image.
Finally was spot metering which only evaluates the light around the focus point and ignores everything else, evaluating a single zone and calculating exposure based on that single area, nothing else
Alan the injected into the discussion the fundamental flaw in that all in-camera light meters in that they can only measure reflected light. This means the best they can do is guess how much light is actually hitting the subject rather than accurately measuring the incident light.
The group then discussed their views on the various metering modes available on most modern cameras, outlining their particular favoured methods when using evaluative, centre weighted and spot metering and how they compensate for the camera’s failing with the use of exposure compensation, hand held light meters and camera presets.