Highlight-weighted v's Multi-field

[Guest]

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I've just been away for a few days to Malta to get some relief from the grey drab of England in November!

I had a great time with the M11-P using my 35 Lux FLE and 50 Cron v5 and am starting to get a feel for which lens does what. I'm also getting much better at (static) focussing and my wife no longer starts tapping her foot waiting for me to take a shot. 

A lot of the architecture in Malta consists of high walls with narrow streets and alleys. Together with a strong sum and (hurrah!) cloudless blue skies. I found I was quite often overexposing the highlights so I switched from multi-field to highlight-weighted metering and that was much more successful.

Given that the M11 has great DR and that  I always shoot Raw and edit in Lightroom I was wondering if I should use Highlight-weighted all the time? Is there any advantage to Multi-field?

Thanks for any advice.

[Photoworks]

I use it all the time. It is not a strong underexposure and balanced for every day use if you edit in post.

For night shots, I will still apply -1 stop correction.

[elmars]

I photographed with Highlight weighted metering for a long time and then gave up at some point. The metering method is a multi-segment metering, but not particularly intelligent. Essentially, it leads to 1/3 underexposure. I found it too annoying to have to correct the exposure of almost every image. And the sensor of the M11 is so good that there are very few blown out highlights. If I see a danger, I correct downwards in individual cases, but no longer generally through the metering method.

[hdmesa]

Turn on live view and you’ll see that with the evaluative metering modes like highlight and multifield, the exposure jumps around too much as you move the camera around in high contrast lighting. They’re just not consistent for me.

Center Weighted is the most reliable across all sorts of lighting. For landscapes with clouds you’re worried about overexposing, point the center of the frame at the clouds, half press the shutter and recompose.

In critical lighting, such as at sunset when shooting the opposite direction, and you have very small areas of super bright clouds against dark clouds or sky, you’re best off going to manual and using the LCD. Once you find the exposure that protects those highlights, you can leave it and just keep shooting.

Edited November 10, 2024 by hdmesa

[lct]

5 hours ago, Corius said:

Given that the M11 has great DR and that  I always shoot Raw and edit in Lightroom I was wondering if I should use Highlight-weighted all the time? Is there any advantage to Multi-field?

Yes or no depending if it works for you. For me it is mostly multifield -2/3 EV but i shoot only raw.

[Smogg]

I use Highlight -2/3EV or -1EV on a sunny day

[SrMi]

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I use multi-field but check the clipping to adjust exposure. No metering mode will be able to provide the best exposure without user intervention automatically. It is best to pick one method and learn how it works to anticipate ECs based on the scene—nothing beast experience.

[hdmesa]

1 hour ago, SrMi said:

I use multi-field but check the clipping to adjust exposure. No metering mode will be able to provide the best exposure without user intervention automatically. It is best to pick one method and learn how it works to anticipate ECs based on the scene—nothing beast experience.

But therein lies the difficulty since Highlight Weighted can be completely unpredictable. It's not purely evaluating highlights like Nikon does, it's also taking into consideration potential subjects and is segmented with regard to what it decides is important in the frame. Highlight Weighted is much like Multi Field but with a bias toward highlights. Multi Field is more predictable but still less predictable than Center Weighted. Center Weighted is the only large-area metering method that is 100% predictable based on past experience. That may be less critical for most since they are often checking their exposures on the LCD. But with my M11-D, it becomes extremely important to use a metering method that isn't sometimes thrown off by subject and segment based evaluative software calculations.

Edited November 10, 2024 by hdmesa

[Smogg]

19 minutes ago, hdmesa said:

But therein lies the difficulty since Highlight Weighted can be completely unpredictable. It's not purely evaluating highlights like Nikon does, it's also taking into consideration potential subjects and is segmented with regard to what it decides is important in the frame. Highlight Weighted is much like Multi Field but with a bias toward highlights. Multi Field is more predictable but still less predictable than Center Weighted. Center Weighted is the only large-area metering method that is 100% predictable based on past experience. That may be less critical for most since they are often checking their exposures on the LCD. But with my M11-D, it becomes extremely important to use a metering method that isn't sometimes thrown off by subject and segment based evaluative software calculations.

It is because of the poor predictability of highlight metering that I have a correction of -2/3EV or -1EV. This way I am guaranteed not to burn out the highlights. I only risk that some of the frames will be underexposed, but considering the fact that the matrix in the M11 is isoless, this is not at all scary, and I will simply correct it in post-processing.

[Steadimann]

12 hours ago, Smogg said:

It is because of the poor predictability of highlight metering that I have a correction of -2/3EV or -1EV. This way I am guaranteed not to burn out the highlights. I only risk that some of the frames will be underexposed, but considering the fact that the matrix in the M11 is isoless, this is not at all scary, and I will simply correct it in post-processing.

I have noticed that using -1/3 exp compensation with highlight metering works well in general. It does require -2/3 or even -1 in low constrast situations. But in both cases I am happy because of how good sensor is, I can recover all I need.

[Guest]

Thanks for the comments everyone. As usual people have differing views which is a good thing.

It looks like most folk are preserving highlights either by using highlight weighted or multi-field, both with greater or lesser additional EV compensation.

Interesting comment on using Center Weighted metering from @hdmesa which I'll need to experiment with.

I think @SrMi's advice to pick one method and learn to use it properly is very good, and something that I'll do.

[J S H]

I would also note that it might well depend on whether you are using the rangefinder or EVF as your primary way to compose. Highlight metering at -2/3 works well for most applications. However, as hdmesa noted, it isn't always perfect. It can also be tough to use the EVF combined with highlight or multifield because it often produces a strobe-like effect and just isn't worth the hassle. With the optical viewfinder, it's not an issue and highlight weighted works really well for me. I usually just switch to manual or spot with the EVF or when I'm using a tripod and use highlight -2/3 otherwise. 

[lct]

17 minutes ago, J S H said:

[...] It can also be tough to use the EVF combined with [...] multifield because it often produces a strobe-like effect [...]

I have never seen this so far. Do you have examples?

Edited November 11, 2024 by lct

[hdmesa]

1 hour ago, lct said:

I have never seen this so far. Do you have examples?

They mean flickering in the Visoflex/LCD. It's quite disturbing. Has no effect on the output, but it's a terrible user experience. This can be mitigated by changing exposure preview to half-press of the shutter instead of setting it to permanent. 

[lct]

12 minutes ago, hdmesa said:

This can be mitigated by changing exposure preview to half-press of the shutter

My M11 is always set to half press which could explain i have never seen this but i never got this effect with any other EVF so far. Does it happen in special circumstances? Just curious.

[hdmesa]

30 minutes ago, lct said:

My M11 is always set to half press which could explain i have never seen this but i never got this effect with any other EVF so far. Does it happen in special circumstances? Just curious.

High contrast light makes it worse, but any changing light caused by moving the camera around as you frame up your shot will make it flicker.

[J S H]

1 hour ago, hdmesa said:

They mean flickering in the Visoflex/LCD. It's quite disturbing. Has no effect on the output, but it's a terrible user experience. This can be mitigated by changing exposure preview to half-press of the shutter instead of setting it to permanent. 

Thanks. Yes, this is what I was trying to describe. Under the right conditions (in my case it's quite often), I have seen a fast flicker/strobe effect in the EVF as the camera framing changes. Usually it happens with a high contrast scene, when using either highlight or multi field metering. I like to use the EVF when conditions are right, but have never tried a combo of highlight metering with the half-press exposure preview. I will explore further, as that may be the way to go.