D7000 Metering

[husky_mom]

I have a question about the exposure metering on my camera. My friend is mentoring me and she said always pay attention to the meter to see if your photo's exposure is right, under exposed or over exposed. I am shooting mostly in the aperture priority and am not using the program modes. The exposure metering doesn't always appear in the view finder when I press the shutter release 1/2 way. My friend uses a Canon and hers always appears in the manual modes. Any ideas why it doesn't always appear? Is there a setting I'm missing?

I contacted Nikon tech support and they said that the settings are fine and that's why it doesn't appear. That just doesn't make sense because some of my photos do end out coming over exposed or under exposed and the meter didn't display.

Also, if it doesn't appear always, how do you meter the shadows and meter the light when shooting outdoors to get the correct exposure?

Thanks in advance for any insight.

Val

[ptremb3043]

Nikon only shows the exposure meter when in manual. when in "a" or "s" the camera exposes for the type of metering you are using, ie matrix, center, or spot . This can than be changed up or down with the exposure compensation button to over or under expose from what the camera sees based on looking at the histogram from the first shot in the type of environment you are shooting in. If you shoot RAW and use either "view nx", "view nx2" or " capture nx2" as long as the whites aren't blown out or the blacks crushed to hard you can get back 2 stops up or down from where the exposure was taken w/o doing much damage if any to the picture. If you shoot JPEG it can still be fixed but w/ more effort. A lot of people shoot both RAW & JPEG at the same time. This gives you the ability to fix a good pic that was exposed wrong and the ability to just print the ones that came out right.
To address the issue you are having requires understanding how the metering types work. Matrix looks at the overall picture to try and get the entire picture exposed correctly, Center weight looks at a small portion of the picture in the center and puts more emphases on that area to expose. Spot is just a small area that the camera looks at to determine the exposure. Each has it's use for specific types of pictures. This page explains it fairly good.
"http://mansurovs.com/understanding-metering-modes"

[BrianD]

FWIW, I use nearly always use the spot meter and then AE-L if I need to recompose w/ the D7000.

[Jo.T]

turn your highlights on with playback, this will show you any over exposed area its a great help, but also learn to read your histogram.

Cheers Jo