Metering
As an occasional replacement for a DSLR, the Canon PowerShot G12 has all the metering modes you could want. The most commonly used one will be the evaluative metering mode, which assesses the brightness across a scene and calculates how to correctly expose the image.
For the most part the evaluative metering mode works extremely well, giving priority to the foreground when there is a bright sky.
Obviously, it may not produce an ideal exposure in very awkward situations, but thankfully the exposure compensation feature has its own dedicated dial. This makes it extremely simple to adjust the exposure by up to ±2EV in 0.3EV increments.
As the combination of evaluative metering and exposure compensation is very good, I only had to use spot or centreweighted metering on a few occasions. By default, spot metering is linked to the centre AF point, although it can be linked to any other selectable AF point, which makes it useful if you are photographing an off-centre subject.
Metering can also be linked to Face Detection AF. When using this feature, the camera will prioritise the metering for any faces in the scene. Again, this is particularly useful in social situations and for travel photographs.
