What Is Highlight-Weighted Metering?
I can’t believe I’ve had my camera (Nikon D850) for so many months now and I’ve never before used this metering mode!
Basically, it looks at your image as framed and makes sure you don’t blow out (overexpose) the highlights. By doing so, however, in those higher contrast images, you’ll notice that the shadows will come out way too dark.
Not to worry! That’s where the dynamic range of the sensors in these newer cameras will show their mettle–provided you are shooting in raw and at a relatively low ISO. Just take the image into your raw converter and pull that shadows slider over far enough to bring out the detail you want. The results can be amazing.
Cautions and Tips
–Just to be clear, we are talking metering mode here, NOT exposure mode. The latter refers to P, S, A, M, or Program, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, and Manual modes. The former, and today’s subject, refers to how the camera determines the exposure of a particular image–think terms like Spot Metering, Center-Weighted-Metering, Matrix Metering, Evaluative Metering, Zone Metering, and so on.
–Sometimes highlight-weighted metering mode overdoes it, making your photograph way too dark, so you may want to try dialing in 1/3, 2/3, or even a full stop of exposure compensation on the plus (bright) side. Experiment.
–Realize that the camera will be showing you a JPEG representation on your LCD along with its related histogram. When you open the raw file, you might actually have more latitude with your highlights and shadows (especially the shadows) than the histogram led you to believe. That is, even when the JPEG histogram shows a whole slew of pixels slammed up against the left side of the graph (all black pixels, thus lost detail in the shadows), you might actually be able to recover a lot of that detail in the raw file. How much can you get away with? Again, experiment.
–Shooting at the lowest ISO possible will give you the most flexibility in bringing out detail in the shadows in your raw file. At ISO 64 the results can be unbelievable, while at ISO 3200 not so much. With the D850, I have found that if you go much above ISO 400-600 or so you will start to see a noticeable negative impact on shadow recovery flexibility.
–If you dial in too much plus (+) compensation and end up with the histogram pushed against the right side, remember that it is much more difficult to recover detail from these over-exposed (white, or near white) pixels. Dial back the compensation a bit and shoot again.
–Highlight-weighted metering mode may not be for everyone–especially if you don’t shoot and develop in raw. Experiment!
–Expect this metering mode to filter down to lower end cameras as technology inevitably marches on and on.
–For more in-depth info on this mode, why you might want to use it, and how to set it up, try this article by Nikon USA: Using the Highlight-Weighted Metering Mode.
One Example
To give you an idea of how this works, take a look at the following image of Edifici Colom, a high-rise structure near the lower end of La Rambla in Barcelona.
In this first version, you see the original JPEG file as it came out of the camera (with neutral camera settings–although maybe I could have dialed in a bit more + exposure compensation). The raw file looked very similar, maybe even a bit darker in the shadows. Note that the highlights here look reasonably well-exposed–nothing blown out and you can see detail throughout the clouds. But, alas, the building, and even the sky on the right, is severely underexposed:
Edifici Colom, #10. Barcelona, 2019 (Original JPEG File)
Next, and finally, here is one possible end product–after fixing the exposure in Camera Raw then converting it to B&W in the Silver Efex Pro plug-in. (Shooting at ISO 64, I opened up that shadow slider all the way to 100% with no ill effect–no weird noise or coloration.) What a difference from the original capture! The huge dynamic range capability of these newer sensors give you a lot of latitude when pulling detail out of those dark shadows. So, try this new metering mode if you haven’t already–you might find it just as useful as I did!
Edifici Colom, #10. Barcelona, 2019 (Final)
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