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knows how to make white snow or sand look white, instead of a conventional light meter's
making everything look medium 18% gray. It applies the zone system automatically to
attempt to render a correct exposure under difficult and contrasty situations. When
shooting in a hurry under rapidly changing conditions, which is the whole point of using a
small format camera like a Nikon, there is no better way to meter your exposures.
An example of too much scene contrast midday.
No meter can correct for poor lighting or too high a lighting ratio. This confuses many into
thinking that their meters are defective, even though the meter is perfect. If you have
problems with highlights washing out even though your subject is well exposed, or with
shadows going too dark even though the main subject is OK, your problem is with too
much contrast in your lighting, not your exposure. For photographs with people, use your
Nikon flash under all conditions and you will probably improve most of these problems.
Lighting is the most important technical and artistic aspect of painting, art and photography.
Others have already written a lot about lighting, so I won't try to duplicate that here. I like to
write about things you can't find anyplace else. It is imperative that you learn to be
sensitive to the quality of light, and learn to be patient in waiting for it. This is very, very
important!
All the other major SLR makers since about 1990 have imitated this meter under many
different names. Canon calls it "evaluative," and most camera makers brag about it by
specifying how many sensors they use. Even Leica attempts to copy it. Today's Leica R8
has about the same technical sophistication as the 1983 Nikon FA.
The number of sensors is unimportant. The wisdom that goes into the firmware that
interprets the data from the sensors IS what's important.
The original Nikon FA had only 5 metering sensors. Today even the F100's Matrix meter
works with the same 5 main sensors, and only adds the 5 spot sensors into the mix for fine
tuning. Canon's excellent Rebel 2000 claims 35 sensors; I still prefer the Nikon meter's
programming. The Nikon N90 had a whole bunch of sensors right in the very center of the
image, which makes for an impressive number-of-sensors spec, but has nothing to do with
the meter's ability. Nothing is wrong with the N90's meter; it's just that the N90 sounds like
a toy when it runs.
© 2007 KenRockwell.com 61 converted by Sándor Nagy