Nikon D500 - first impressions

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Fine-tune always around 1/6EV, mostly in the - direction.Only for matrix. I've done so with all models offering this feature.

[Frode]

Fine-tune always around 1/6EV, mostly in the - direction.Only for matrix. I've done so with all models offering this feature.

Thanks Bjørn, I'll give - 1/6EV a try 👍.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Matrix metering has had the tendency of paying too much attention to the shadows, thus letting down the highlights. That's OK for negative film, but not digital.

[Bill Mellen]

Matrix metering has had the tendency of paying too much attention to the shadows, thus letting down the highlights. That's OK for negative film, but not digital.

Absolutely.

To make things more interesting, I found out that the D500 has a special metering mode "Highlight-weighted: Available with type G, E and D lenses" that will definitely give dark pictures in the snow. 

The D500 is the first camera I have had that has this mode.  I was rather flustered when I accidentally selected that mode and thought my brand new camera was broken 

[Bent Hjarbo]

Thanks for all the replies.
I did not use the fine tune setting, but was thinking abut doing so.
And the the compensation was not altered from 0.
We have for a change some snow here in Copenhagen, so I did a test like Bjørn.
I have 3 cameras, D700, D800 and the D500, using the same 24-70 F2.8 set on f5.6 and 24 mm on all three cameras, and then a picture of my garden.
From the three picture I can see that already the D800 has some change to the exposure, all three was in matrix metering.
The crops are made from RAW files, and exposure has not been changed in Lightroom.
The +1 compensation seems a bit too much for thise pictures, in Lightroom a +0,5 was enough, but LR's automatic mode did a +1 for the D700 and +1.65 for the others, this however changed the colour of the D800 NEF file to be very reddish and not natural.

[Øivind Tøien]

One really need to pay attention to where the focus point is located, as that is used for weighing the exposure (and sometimes to different degrees between camera models).
My experience is that low contrast (with respect to the snow) scenes like this with flat lighting are the ones most likely to trigger underexposure.

[Bent Hjarbo]

One really need to pay attention to where the focus point is located, as that is used for weighing the exposure (and sometimes to different degrees between camera models).
My experience is that low contrast (with respect to the snow) scenes like this with flat lighting are the ones most likely to trigger underexposure.

This may explain some of my underexposed pictures, as we had overcast weather in Norway and today in Copenhagen.
I focused on the same bush on all three pictures with the center point. But anyway Nikon seems to have changes the metering system since the D700, as also the D800 the underexposure as the D500.
I will have to lear how to master this, I was just checking it might be a problem with my sample.

[Bill Mellen]

SOOC Jpeg (Neutral Sharpness 3) D500 Matrix +2/3 stop exposure bias.  Another 1/3 might have been good.



Click to view on Flickr where full EXIF is available.  User right and left arrows while on Flickr to see similar images on the same day.

[charlie]

One really need to pay attention to where the focus point is located, as that is used for weighing the exposure (and sometimes to different degrees between camera models).

For sure, when I moved from the D700 to the D800 I noticed a big shift in regards focus point location and the exposure when using matrix metering. If the D800 focus point was placed on a shadow area of the scene it would expose much more for the shadow than the entire scene, counterintuitive I thought. The D700 did not behave that way. Took some getting used to.

[David H. Hartman]

for snow, I always +1 or even +2
there is definitely something in the snow that is fooling the meter

**Snow is white, well usually. With most meters you have to increase the exposer. For the old zone system you'd place snow on zone VI to VIII when using a 1/21 degree spot meter. It would be a judgement call. Would +2.33 stops be typical? It been a long time. Snow can sparkle and fool a meter even more.

Dave Hartman

Sometimes snow is yellow.**

[Bent Hjarbo]

SOOC Jpeg (Neutral Sharpness 3) D500 Matrix +2/3 stop exposure bias.  Another 1/3 might have been good.

Nice to see snow be used for fun
The exposure setting is close to what I had to change a lot of my pictures with in LR, to get the snow the right colour, white

[Erik Lund]

However the reflected light from snow can appear blue,,,

[bjornthun]

**Snow is white, well usually. With most meters you have to increase the exposer. For the old zone system you'd place snow on zone VI to VIII when using a 1/21 degree spot meter. It would be a judgement call. Would +2.33 stops be typical? It been a long time. Snow can sparkle and fool a meter even more.

Dave Hartman

Sometimes snow is yellow.**

White is probably the most difficult colour for an exposure meter to understand, even if it is supposed to understand colour. How is a colour meter to differentiate white from overefpised gray? It can't, so even today the photographer needs to help the computer in the camera. It's still man over machine.

I come from the old Olympus OM system as my first camera system, where cameras like OM-4(Ti), OM-3(Ti) and the OM-2 Spot Program, all offered spot metering, and even multi spot for the OM-3/4 (Ti) series. This was a great way of learning to judge exposure, and the Zone system made a lot of sense. Olympus even did a partial implementation with Highlight (+2.7 EV) and Shadow (-2 EV) exposure modes.

You would typically do a spot reading of a white surface and push the Highlight button to achieve a correct exposure.

[bjornthun]

For sure, when I moved from the D700 to the D800 I noticed a big shift in regards focus point location and the exposure when using matrix metering. If the D800 focus point was placed on a shadow area of the scene it would expose much more for the shadow than the entire scene, counterintuitive I thought. The D700 did not behave that way. Took some getting used to.

This is intuitive to me, since the point you focus on is probably the important part of the image. It's even a desired behaviour for those of us who "grew up" with Olympus OM with spot metering, which I did.

[Bent Hjarbo]

This is intuitive to me, since the point you focus on is probably the important part of the image. It's even a desired behaviour for those of us who "grew up" with Olympus OM with spot metering, which I did.

This doesn't explain at least to me why I get the difference, as the focus point always is on the skier, even the skier looks underexposed