I was wondering if I am the only person in the US to get bombarded with calls from folks that sound Indian, but say they are IRS agents and I should call them so we can clear up this terrible action they have brought against me. I have at least 10 calls to my cell phone from 10 different areas of the country. I am a retired accountant and realize this is bulls##t. So, if you have had any of these calls, please make me feel better. thanks.

I might add that I have also had calls claiming to be Microsoft or sometimes Dell saying they have received virus alerts from my computer. I played along with one until he wanted me to sign on my computer and let him have access so he could clear up this very dangerous virus. When I told him I was in my car, and I would call him back.

Here is what you are missing.

The meter ONLY does one thing. It senses what tones (black all the way to white) are in the field of view at any given moment and then tries to provide an exposure to make them "average"

Because of that the ONLY scene that a meter gets 100% correct is a picture of a 18% gray card that fills the frame.

Anything else strays off of that goal to one degree or another. Point it to the left...you get one exposure....move the camera 30 degrees to point it at something else and it's choosing a different exposure (even thought the actual light falling on the scene hasn't changed one iota.)

The exposure compensation wheel is a way to correct the camera's mistake when providing exposures that aren't correct (like a snow scene where there's lots of white for example)

You are supposed to guess how wrong the camera is and then turn the exposure compensation to fix it.


My personal opinion is that the in camera meter is worthless to me. I just don't like to fiddle with it. I don't like to spend my time second guessing the camera. I set the camera to the proper exposure and then ignore the meter's needle altogether.

But that's a conversation for another time. I'm sure that will spark a lot of comments from other hoggers. :)