And how did that work with ETTR? (which is the subject of this thread…)
1 Like
Fair call. I digressed from the original post.
I found this discussion interesting… as someone who started photography with a 5mp Fuji point and shoot, then migrated to mirrorless, I tend to just judge exposure from the preview. On all my cameras I use matrix metering, and have ev compensation on a wheel under my thumb, and I pretty much twiddle it on autopilot… 
If I want to be really sure that I’m not blowing highlights I just use the in camera clipping indicator in playback, knowing that as long as that’s mostly ok my Raw is definitely ok.
This self-taught approach caused me some grief when I got my first DSLR last year (for motorsport - I really like the optical finder for this).
“What! I can’t go by the picture in the viewfinder?” I knew this of course, but subconsciously I was still expecting my images to look likw what I saw in the finder. So I had to relearn that bit, and experimented with my Nikon’s metering until I got a feel for what it would do. Most of the time I’m quite happy to err on the side of underexposure, as long as it’s not more than about 1 or 1.5 stops.
Long and short of it is that I don’t bother about ETTR, except if it’s clear that there’s a really big dynamic range that I want to be useable, and if I have time to think about it.
I’m not a professional though so YMMV (even if I was, actually!)
1 Like
I don’t know if the E-M5 Mark III has “Spot Hi” metering. I use it on the E-M1 Mark II when I want to ETTR. Just point the spot to the brightest area in the scene and lock exposure. In darktable this gives a histogram that nearly touches the right edge. This works great when I have the time to work the shot.
2 Likes