Metering
There are three metering modes available in the Samsung NX10: multi, centreweighted and spot. Of these, most users will probably leave the camera in its multi-segment metering mode, which measures the level of brightness across an entire scene and sets the exposure according to the conditions.
I found that the Samsung NX10 produces quite a ‘standard’ exposure when in multi-metering mode. By this I mean it produces the results you would expect. For example, I found that if I had a large shaded area, the NX10 would try to lighten this area, but this would cause some areas in the sky to burn out. Conversely, the foreground in images that contained a large expanse of bright sky was a few stops too dark, although detail in the sky was retained.
This makes it very easy when using the camera to know how the evaluative multi-metering will react in most scenes. In turn, this makes it easy to dial in the correct amount of exposure compensation when you are photographing certain scenes.The exposure compensation is also linked to the Live View display, which is a definite advantage over film cameras. While this preview isn’t 100% accurate and obviously depends on the screen’s brightness level, it does give a better idea of how the final exposure will look.
When a trickier scene is encountered, or to make sure a particular part of a scene is correctly exposed, spot metering is a better option than multi-metering. I photographed a grey card in spot metering mode and then used Photoshop to measure the density of the RGB channels. Each one measured 128 on a scale of 0-255, so the Samsung NX10 measures an exact midtone.
On the whole, I found that the NX10 produces well-exposed images, and when presented with more difficult scenes it was simple to adjust the exposure accordingly.
