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by Bruce Sherman on Wed Apr 25, 2018 9:45 pm
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While looking at bird pics on the web I noticed one shot (bright white bird against darker BG) where highlight metering was used with a Nikon d500. I plan to try it out on my next trip out in a few days but I am curious about whether anyone here has tried it and how well it performed.

Thanks in advance.
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by E.J. Peiker on Thu Apr 26, 2018 7:38 am
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It's not really designed for that.  It is designed to shoot things like concerts and stage performances where you have an artist lit by spotlights but the background is deep black.  In that situation any normal metering mode would be heavily influenced by the large percentage of black in the background resulting in sever overexposure of the artist.  In your situation, while it might work in many situations, I would expect some inconsistent results and potential underexposure of the bird.  It's worth a try but I think simply setting the correct exposure for the situation in manual mode will give you much more consistent results frame to frame.
 

by Bruce Sherman on Thu Apr 26, 2018 7:45 am
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Thanks, EJ. Soon after I posted my question I realized that there are multiple situations I encounter where this would not work at all. First and foremost, if any bright sky or water was in the frame the subject would be greatly underexposed. 
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by E.J. Peiker on Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:29 am
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Bruce Sherman wrote:Thanks, EJ. Soon after I posted my question I realized that there are multiple situations I encounter where this would not work at all. First and foremost, if any bright sky or water was in the frame the subject would be greatly underexposed. 
Yup, specular highlights can really throw something like this way off as it tries to render those as a normal tonality.  It's really designed for event photography indoors or at night.
 

by Mike in O on Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:30 am
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Is this mode different than the 99II's high light exposure mode which is made for snow, sand etc.?
 

by E.J. Peiker on Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:31 am
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Mike in O wrote:Is this mode different than the 99II's high light exposure mode which is made for snow, sand etc.?
As I understand it, not having used an a99II in that mode, they are very different.
 

by Anthony Medici on Thu Apr 26, 2018 10:21 am
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The highlight metering is a SPOT metering where it assumes the spot to be the brightest thing in the frame. If the spot isn't on the subject and the subject isn't the brightest thing in the frame, it can tend to under expose. As EJ states, it was designed, and works very well for stage work. It also works very well for fire. As in jugglers, fire breathers, and the odd camp fire. I've never tried it with  molten lava but I'd think it would work very well there too.
Tony
 

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