Metering question?

jambogaz

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What Metering setting should I have when shooting football ?
 
I would suggest spot, taking it that you want the indiviual player exposed correctly regardless of how the surroundings turn out.
That said I am no expert at football photography but i tend to shoot in spot mode predominantly anyway.
No doubt someone with more experience is this area will help you out.
 
Thanks Asha , I have been shooting in spot but just thought i would make sure.
 
anything but spot. personally i use partial.. spot is bad bad bad!!! unless you can point at faces all the time.. but generaly with football your pointing at a shirt a lot of time... so 2 players going for the ball.. one has black (or dark) shirt and one has white (or light) shirt.. spot meting will give massivley different readings depending on what player you point at. partial has more chance of taking both into consideration..
 
Providing the lighting wasn't going to change much *floodlights, overcase sky, sunshine) wouldn't you just take a few readings off the pitch and average them out and shoot that?
 
Providing the lighting wasn't going to change much *floodlights, overcase sky, sunshine) wouldn't you just take a few readings off the pitch and average them out and shoot that?

yes.. but you would presume by the question that the OP wants to meter .. wouldn't you? :)
 
I've never shot football, but having shot cycling and running events using spot or taking an average of the scene and ignoring the in camera metering has usually worked out fine for me.
 
Never spot for field sports, if you could 100% guarantee your focus point was hitting the face all the time then possibly but seeing as you cant then dont.

Your likely focus point for field sports is the platyers chest, therefore kit coulous come into play, take a black and white hooped kit for instance, using spot metering would see massive swings in settings.

I use Matrix or centre weighted on Nikon, Matrix generally gives me the best results.
 
I would use matrix if I was shooting in Av mode, however 90% of the time I take a reading and then shoot manual adjusting as needed. Even with matrix you will get pretty big swings in exposure if covering teams with either dark or light kits which makes PP a pain.
 
I would use matrix if I was shooting in Av mode, however 90% of the time I take a reading and then shoot manual adjusting as needed. Even with matrix you will get pretty big swings in exposure if covering teams with either dark or light kits which makes PP a pain.

But the OP is asking which metering mode to shoot in so one can only assume he is shooting AV or possibly TV

If i shoot using Matrix it nails the exposure 99.9% of the time for me shooting Rugby, Cricket and the odd footy match, no big swings here for me unless theres a massive amount of sky like 80% of the frame but its only been a problem once in about 200,000 exposures.
 
Thank's guys just back from the game, the son's team got beat in a final:thumbsdown:
I was using AV mode with spot metering, just going to take a look at the results.
 
When shooting in Av mode I usually use centre weighted. This is because where I normally shoot there is a large amount of sky in the picture and the players may come out underexposed.
 
But the OP is asking which metering mode to shoot in so one can only assume he is shooting AV or possibly TV

If i shoot using Matrix it nails the exposure 99.9% of the time for me shooting Rugby, Cricket and the odd footy match, no big swings here for me unless theres a massive amount of sky like 80% of the frame but its only been a problem once in about 200,000 exposures.

Exactly, which I why I said to shoot matrix if using Av (Tv would have been a rare choice).

I appreciate your skill Gary as you really produce some stunning shots, but would have to disagree with the 99.9% nailed in matrix mode unless all kits are not at the extreme ends of the scale (almost white or black) and framed tight. If shooting middle colours then I can accept that it would be close a lot of the time.
 
Exactly, which I why I said to shoot matrix if using Av (Tv would have been a rare choice).

I appreciate your skill Gary as you really produce some stunning shots, but would have to disagree with the 99.9% nailed in matrix mode unless all kits are not at the extreme ends of the scale (almost white or black) and framed tight. If shooting middle colours then I can accept that it would be close a lot of the time.

Hi Mark

All i can say is that im shooting AV i use Matrix and i never ever have any exposure troubles, seriously, unless like i said before unless there is 80% sky or the possibility or serious backlighting then everything is nailed spot on, however if i know im going to come across those described situations which would be very very rare for me then i would shoot using a different method, most of my stuff is wired direct from pitch side and i cant afford to not get it right or have to mess about in post, ive said dozens of times before about post production when ive been asked what i do that i dont do any at all other than to straighten, crop and caption, ive spent £3,500 on my main camera so i make sure that it does all the work for me.

I keep every single image ive captured as it is original straight out of the camera for 2 years and can honestly say if i were to go through every one of them that i coundn't find more than 3 or 4 which were clearly exposed wrongly.

Bear in mind that i dont shoot AV all the time, probably a 50/50 split between AV and fully Manual.
 
I use Matrix or centre weighted on Nikon, Matrix generally gives me the best results.

I know this may seem a stupid one, but did you use the same in in your Canon days - is there any difference?
 
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