Here's my question! Can u use them together? I mean, if I use the spot metering while adjusting my exposure with my grey card, is it going to mess up the settings? I'm asking cos I took some shots yesterday with the center weighed metering mode while adjusting with the grey card and the shots were awful!!! all the shadows were just black! No details at all! Although, my subject was dressed all in black and I'm wondering if I should have had increased the exposure by 1 stop? Not quite sure how to use the grey card yet! Any advice plz!? Although, is the grey card to be used in every occasions or just in difficult lighting situations or what!? Cos so far, I've had better results without using it! O_o Weird!! Help plz!

Can you show us an image as an example? But in general, it shouldn't matter what metering mode you use with a grey card. What kind of light were you shooting in.....? There's this thing called exposure latitude. The depending on the latitude range of the device be it color neg film/ slide / digital, you can only capture a certain # of tones/ranges of dark to light, before you loose detail in the shadows and highlights.

Oh man!! Now that sounds complicated! And I deleted the pics Michelle! :( They were THAT bad!!! Ok, here's what's on the instructions of my grey card: If ur subject is very dark and largely non reflective increase exposure by one stop. If ur subject is very light and highly reflective decrease ur exposure by one stop. To answer ur question, it was kinda cloudy so I also set my white balance on cloudy. The thing is, once I removed the grey card from the front of my cam, the exposure reading didn't read 0EV which I suppose is normal right?

Hmmmm...... I was expecting you to say that you were shooting in bright high noon sun with lots of deep shadows.... Sounds as if opening up/increasing exposure by one stop in this case would have helped. Not knowing your camera all that well, I would say it is probably normal for the EV reading to change after you meter off the grey card. Because now it's looking at the actual scene you intend to photograph and that is what it is now reading.....

I am just a ''novice'' with exposure , wich seems a very complicated word yet to me.....but I foud of great interest all of what have been written by Ansel Adams on zone system..and shoting for dark zones (spot metering)as a way to extend the tone scal over 7 tones.. wich is usually what we get I guess...I am experience it these days..and try to shot to extend the scale..but i dod not fully understood the thing...;-)Hope it can help may be ;-)

Mmmmh! That's what I don't get here u see: If I make my settings with the grey card and then adjust the EV then the grey card reading is useless!! I just don't get that part!! Thx Mireille, I will check this out! ;)

C'est gale pour moi aussi Pascale et pour le me truc...lol...;-)

LOL!!! I hear ya Mireille! ;)

BTW, do u have a link where I could find the infos u were talking about about Ansel Adams?? Or were u referring to a book??

I am checking my links Pascale..one is explaining an easy way with a graph...I'll find it and get back...But your way with spot metering is the right way...and with dark areas..you have to shot for the dark as spotting an area that you want to be gray (zone V) compensate for the exposure an then get some more white in post prod (or darkroom)...though expanding the tone range...It's a question of seeing in black and white in terms of tones you want...then decide youself what will be grey zone V...wich the spot metring allow you...Mais je ne comprends toujours pas alors pourquoi utiliser la carte...comme tu dis...;-)

Here...it's a very good link...and the zone system applied to digital too.. does applied to digital too...the paper..becoming the digital darkroom...;-) http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/zone_system.shtml If you un derstand the gry card issue..you would explain to me please? Ciao ;-)

Well, the grey card is to set ur exposure. "U cannot compensate for ur camera's inaccuracies to match the scene unless u know how far from the average the scene is. This is very difficult thing to judge so the answer is to give the camera what it expects to see, the prevailing light falling on ur scene bounced off a surface which reflects 18% of light in all colors, an average reflectance, average grey: a grey card!". But apparently, most scenes fall into the average but some scenes don't, like darker scenes or snow scenes and stuff and that's when the grey card is becoming handy! So I guess I've just answered my own question here and that is to use the grey card in less than average scenes only! Well, I hope so! Michelle? Help? PLz! ;)

Oh thx for the link Mireille btw! Gonna check this out right now! ;)

I found something very interesting there: "They place the card next to the subject and meter from it. This is equivalent to incident light metering: measuring the light that reaches the subject. With incident metering, the exposure is independent of the subject's reflectance: dark subjects come out dark and light subjects come out light. Incident metering works very well in studio environments and for close-ups, but it isn't practical for landscapes. Meters built into cameras measure reflected light." ;) I guess that's why my yesterday pics were so god damn dark!!!

Thank's...It does help me too!

Ah cool!! So we both learnt something here! I like that! :D This is what I call team work! ;) Hehe!