The color Matrix meter of the F5 ought to be extraordinary. This is why Canon contract photographer Arthur Morris has said that the world's best camera is the Nikon F5. I have not tried it, because if I did I'm sure I wind up having to haul an F5 all over the place. I'm being obstinate by not trying the F5, you don't have to be. Meter accuracy is the most important aspect of image quality contributed by the camera, and why I shoot with Nikon.

This article refers to the conventional Matrix meter introduced in the FA in 1983 and continues to this day in all Nikon AF SLRs.

BASIC EXPLANATION

see full original documentation here>>

Guessing your subject type

The Matrix meter first tries to guess what you are photographing (the hard part) and then makes the appropriate exposure calculation (the easy part.)

You may have read that the Matrix meter compares the light reading to "over 30 million billion zillion onboard stored images" or some other baloney. Those images aren't in the camera. What the camera does do is use the experience gained from professional photographers and analyzing many, many photos (that's your 30,000 number) in order to help program the camera's firmware to recognize what sort of photo you are trying to make. Once it has classified your image it then can make the best calculations for your exposure.

The camera classifies images as shown on page 5 of the documentation.

Sunlit white values

These meters all also make use of a very important observation: the sun is always about as bright on a clear day as is it is every other clear day. If a camera sees something above the brightness of a gray card in sunlight (LV15), it knows that it is seeing something lighter than gray. It knows this because it is smart enough to know that the sun didn't just get twice as bright.

When it sees something that needs to be made lighter it deliberately "overexposes" compared to a dumb meter so that the light items look light.

This is simple zone system application; if the meter sees something two stops above where a gray card in daylight would be (LV15 + 2 stops = LV17, page A 33) then it knows to "overexpose" this section two stops, in order to make it look white instead of gray.

If the Matrix meter sees segments that are really bright, say anything above LV 16-1/3, it just ignores them. It knows that they represent bright highlights or direct sunlight, and should not use them to calculate exposure. It instead puts more weight on the other segments.

Absolute light levels

© 2007 KenRockwell.com

62

converted by Sándor Nagy