Why Use Spot Metering in Real Estate Photos? 

Using spot metering can save you time and hassle when photographing tricky lighting conditions. It’s a must-know technique, whether you’re a professional photographer or just want to take better photos. 

(Searching in Google “real estate team photos ideas“? Contact us today!)

This simple, easy-to-understand technique is perfect for overcoming harsh natural or ambient lighting – and it can even help you create dreamy backlit portraits. 

It’s also a great tool to have when shooting interiors, where you need to capture the exact lighting levels in every room. Using spot metering allows you to get the correct exposures for both light and dark areas in an image, so you can avoid washed-out windows or overexposed walls in your photos. 

The first step is to select your camera’s spot metering mode. Most cameras let you do this by choosing a point in the scene that you want to measure. 

Some cameras also let you link your spot metering to the focus point. This means that when you press the shutter button, it will focus on the spot metering point and measure the light in that area, as opposed to measuring it from around the entire frame. 

You can use this feature to measure any spot within the viewfinder, including tiny details like flowers, or even the stars in the night sky. The only downside is that this feature may cause the metering to take a reading from the whole frame instead of just that spot, so be sure to adjust your settings until you get the perfect exposure for the scene you’re shooting. 

Depending on the type of camera you have, it may also have other features that can be useful when using spot metering. For example, some Nikon DSLRs use a system called D-Lighting to adjust shadows and highlights in real-time based on the measurements they take with spot metering. 

Another popular use of spot metering is for taking a series of shots with different shutter speeds and then adjusting the exposure in post-production. This is a very effective way to overcome difficult lighting situations in real estate photography because it ensures that you capture the exact exposure for all areas of the scene, avoiding washed-out or overexposed areas in your images. 

This technique is especially important for interiors, where you need to capture the perfect exposure for both light and dark areas in an image because you can’t afford to expose a bright, open-plan space too dark or vice versa. The other major advantage is that it allows you to make a quick, confident decision about which shutter speed to use and how to manually adjust your exposure so that it’s just right for the image. 

To start using spot metering in your real estate photography, you need to make sure that your camera’s metering mode is set to manual and that the spot metering is set to the center of the image frame. This is the only way that you can ensure that your camera’s metering mode will be set to spot metering and that your camera’s meter will read from just the spot you’re aiming it at.