MacDonalds, Metering, Manual Mode

Sitting inside MacDonald's munching on a breakfast sandwich, I wondered again how well the D300 would deal with snow. The children's playground, seen here through my window, was a suitable test: snow on top lit up by the sun; bright red, yellow, and blue colors; snow on the ground in the shadow. I've just shown 3 images here although I took more.

In the first one I used the Color Zone System (adapted from Ansel Adam's Zone System). I used manual mode, spot metering; metered the bright snow on the top and opened up 1.5 stops. Here's what you get:




This one I used a similar setup: manual mode, spot metering, metered the yellow section, and according to the Color Zone System, I opened up 1 stop. Judge for yourself. All of these images are straight from the camera:

This one I used Matrix Metering (pattern). The D300 uses the D3's 1024-cell zone system to match the exposure against the system's 40,000 image database to arrive at the desired exposure. This is the only one, according to the D300's highlight LCD screen, did not have blowouts -- the dreaded blinkies -- indicating that areas of the image are devoid of image data.

So, I conclude that except for special cases, I may as well use matrix metering. It's very smart on the D300 and cameras that feature the same system.