radiojohn

We've travelled a long way from using hand-held incident light meters, haven't we?

Stardust Loc: Central Illinois

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

--Bob

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Do mirrorless cameras need metering?

radiojohn

Is a Gray Card kinda like an American Express card?

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

JD750 Loc: SoCal

😅

Ourspolair

Never leave home without it! :)

BebuLamar

I didn't know just taken the OP's words as I am not a Canon user and the Canon Mirrorless is of no interest to me. So I thought perhaps they didn't have the spot meter because it's not needed as I do think it's not needed. However, giving some more thought it would be a marketing mistake as the cost is too low and the chance of those reviewers to give negative points is too great.

Van Gogh Loc: Lansdale, Pa.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Spot Focus and Spot Metering are two very different things.

The EOS R essentially has both....

Spot Focus isn't actually labelled as such in the EOS R. In some other Canon cameras Spot Focus is high precision, single point focus. When it's selected, the camera uses one smaller-than-usual AF point for greater focus control and accuracy. The user can freely choose to use any of the individual AF points of the camera (just as they can do with standard Single Point). Spot Focus may be a little slower than using the standard, full size AF point. The EOS R doesn't offer this, as such. However, with EOS R you can select to use only a single AF point and you can set the AF point size to "small", which serves the same purpose and has the same effect as Spot Focus in other Canon.

Spot Metering is actually what the original post was about. This metering mode restricts the camera's internal light metering system to only read a small portion of the image area. The EOS R has a 2.7% Spot Meter mode, which is designated by a circle in the center of the viewfinder screen. EOS R also has the other three metering modes typical of Canon and other cameras: Partial.... which is sort of like a larger spot covering 6.1% of the image area; Center Weighted.... which reads the entire scene, but puts extra emphasis on the center; and Evaluative... which reads the entire scene, but puts extra emphasis on the area right around active AF point(s), sort of assuming that's the most important part of the image since it's what you're having the camera & lens focus upon. These four metering modes or "patterns" are fairly typical of modern cameras, though the size of Spot and Partial areas tend to vary and some more entry-level cameras omit Spot entirely. The mode Canon calls Evaluative Metering is called Matrix or Multi-Segment Metering by other manufacturers.

Some top-of-the-line camera models (Canon's 1D-series, for example) have AF linked Spot Metering. With this, rather than the Spot Meter being anchored at the center of the images area the way it is with most cameras, instead the camera will perform Spot Metering right around active or selected AF point(s). This is usually limited to only be possible with certain AF points (Canon EOS-3 film cameras I used have 45 AF points, but only 11 or 13 of them could be linked to Spot Metering). Without this feature, it's possible to use Spot Metering to take a reading, then use AE Lock to prevent the exposure from changing when you re-compose and take the shot.



Not very far at all. I still carry and use a hand-held, incident light meter. It's a far more accurate method of metering in a lot of situations. Reflective metering, which is what all cameras do with their internal metering systems, is heavily influenced by the tonality of whatever it's being pointed at. Incident metering is not. It measures the strength of light falling onto the subject, so the tonality of the subject (or scene) has no effect on the meter.

In-camera metering works pretty well a lot of the time. The larger the area being metered, the more likely that it will "average out" to the "18% gray" the reflective meter is calibrated to (some say "15% gray"... whatever). The smaller the area being metered... such as with Partial or Spot Metering... the more careful and accurate you need to be compensating for any variation from "average". With any of the auto exposure modes, that adjustment is done with Exposure Compensation. When shooting purely Manual (no Auto ISO), compensation is done by varying from the setting the camera's meter is recommending.

But, while in-camera, reflective metering is "pretty good" and many scenes we photograph "average out" nicely, when it's really critical and/or the subject or scene is far from average tonalities, an incident meter used correctly can be very helpful achieving an accurate exposure. Many incident meters (including the Sekonic L358 and Minolta VF I use) are also flash meters, which can be invaluable setting up manual flash or studio strobe lighting.

Collhar Loc: New York City.

Grey?? Mine is Black.