Learning wildlife photography – Exposure and metering modes

Posted on 13. Jan, 2009 by Paul Burwell in Everything, Techniques, Wildlife photography

Cougar walking across the top of a ledge - CA

Learning wildlife photography – Exposure and metering modes - Your camera probably has a number of modes that you can use for choosing an exposure. Wildlife photography has some special considerations that you’ll want to take into consideration when choosing an exposure and metering mode.

Automatic or programmed mode – The camera makes all the decisions about shutter speed and aperture size. Not recommended unless you’re in too much of a hurry to think things through. For emergency use only.

Manual mode – The photographer makes all the decisions about shutter speed and aperture size. This is a great mode when you’re photographing in tough conditions like bright snowy conditions with dark subjects. Many photographers photograph exclusively in manual mode. Once you’ve learned your camera’s exposure and metering modes it’s a great mode to use but requires constant adjustment under changing lighting conditions.

Horse running through a snowy field

TV or Shutter Priority mode – The photographer chooses a desired shutter speed and the camera automatically adjusts the aperture based on what it is metering. This mode can be useful for making sure you’re freezing the action but in reality is a mode I almost never use for wildlife photography.

AV or Aperture Priority mode – The photographer chooses a desired aperture and the camera automatically adjusts the shutter speed based on what it is metering. By selecting the aperture the photographer has direct control over the depth-of-field in their image. That has several advantages for the nature photographer.

In general, I shoot most of my wildlife images in aperture priority mode. I do this because I’m typically looking to control the depth-of-field in my images to try to separate my subject from its background. Of course, there is no hard and fast “rule” for this sort of thing and the exposure mode you choose will ultimately depend on what you are trying to achieve.

Metering modes - Modern cameras generally have a number of modes for metering the light coming into the camera. Although the technology has greatly improved over the last few years, unfortunately there isn’t one mode that is perfect for every condition.

Pine Grosbeak perched on a branch

In any given metering mode, remember that the camera is looking to make whatever it meters equivalent in tone to an 18% grey card. If your subject isn’t a neutral tone, you need to compensate for the difference in the camera by making adjustments to the exposure or dialling in exposure compensation.

Let’s stop to consider this for a moment. If we’re metering snow, the camera looks at the snow (and being dumb doesn’t realize its snow) and says “I need to make that snow equivalent to an 18% grey card” and so without any adjustments or compensation your pictures of snow will be underexposed and the snow will look grey instead of white. Similarly consider metering something dark, like black dirt. Again, the camera is dumb and doesn’t realize its black dirt and so you end up with grey dirt, much brighter than it appeared in reality. Knowing how your camera’s metering system looks at the world and just how dumb it actually is can help you make decisions about making exposure adjustments or using exposure compensation. This knowledge combined with the histograms included in our digital cameras goes a long way toward making great exposures.

To compensate for a snowy scene, we generally need to overexpose above what the camera would suggest in order to achieve white snow. Similarly, for black dirt, you’d need to underexpose from the camera’s suggestion in order to accurately reproduce the dirt as an image in your camera.

Spot metering – In spot metering mode you point the camera’s sensor at the specific point you want the camera to meter off of and the camera determines the exposure from the spot being metered.

Center-Weighted Metering – This mode of metering reads the light from the entire sensor but places an emphasis on the light coming from the central and lower area of the sensor. This is a good general-use metering mode as it is most likely to accurately meter a scene where the upper part of the scene (like the sky) is brighter than the main subject of the photograph.

Ruffled Grouse in a sliver of light eating grass

Multi-Segmented Metering- This is the mode I primarily use. Canon calls it evaluative metering while Nikon calls it matrix metering. This metering mode meters a large portion of the scene and sets exposure based on the distribution of brightness, color, distance and composition in order to attempt to render a natural result.

Practice -Like everything else, you need to practice with your camera in the various exposure and metering modes to learn how your camera will react in various situations. You need to practice in order to learn how your particular camera handles different situations.

This isn’t my idea, but an excellent way to learn your camera’s exposure tendencies is to get yourself a couple of teddy bears. A brown teddy and a black and white one were my practice subjects. Put them into different lighting situations:

front lit
side lit
back lit
half shadow half lit
on a bright background and on a dark background
throw it in the air against a bright sky and make some flying teddy shots
etc.

Swainson's Hawk perched on an old fence post

Take images of them in a bunch of different situations. Consult your histogram and make adjustments as necessary.

When you bring them into the computer, the image EXIF information recorded with each image will give you a valuable reference for determining what worked and what didn’t. Eventually you will learn how to make a great exposure in any situation you’re likely to find wildlife.

Got some exposure suggestions? Pass them along to the rest of us.

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