Photometry? Wow!

Like most sophisticated cameras, the Fuji x-h2 allows you to determine which part of the scene you are shooting should determine the exposure the camera uses. Sony cameras (the only ones I have used in the last decade) call this setting Metering Mode, which works for me.

For reasons I cannot imagine, Fuji (on the x-h2, at least) calls this setting Photometry. This is a ridiculous label. It implies some sort of precise evaluation of the light entering your camera, when it is no more than a simple choice: what area of the sensor should the camera employ, and what priority should it give to different areas. More importantly, its meaning is opaque. I had no idea what it was until I tried to use it.

All of which has little bearing on the purpose of this post, which is to alert x-h2 users (and I guess users of many other Fuji cameras) to a small discovery: if you are using Subject Detection or Face/Eye Detection, you can forget faffing with Photometry.

If you have one of those two forms of subject detection activated and go in to the menu system to choose your preferred metering mode/photometry, you'll find the menu item in question greyed/grayed out, and an icon of a bird (or whatever) next to it by way of explanation.

The obvious inference from this discovery is that if you are using either form of subject detection, the camera will assess exposure by concentrating on the subject you have detected. But is the obvious inference correct?

Further illumination is difficult to find. I searched thoroughly in the Fuji documentation and in the impressively large (700-page) Complete Guide To Fujifilm’s X-H2 & X-H2s by Tony Philips, and found nothing. I turned to ChatGPT, as you do. Despite persistent pressure from me, she supported my inference but could not produce actual confirmation that this is how the camera works.

For a birder like me, setting the exposure by concentrating on the bird the camera has detected sounds like good news in general, although perhaps not such good news when shooting a Great White Egret or a coal-black Rook. Next time I'm out shooting, I shall attempt to figure out how it works in practice.

The shot of a Chiffchaff I'm posting here was taken hours before I realised that my centre-weighted metering mode/photometry setting was ineffective. Possibly.