Basic Information - Minolta MAXXUM 8000i Instruction Manual

To set the aperture: While holding in the ap¬
erture-setting button, move the setting control
to the left to set a larger aperture number (small¬
er aperture opening) and to the right to set a
smaller aperture number (larger aperture open¬
ing); the aperture changes in half-stop in¬
crements.
In M mode, the viewfinder exposure signals
appear when the shutter-release button is
pressed partway down, allowing you to compare
the current exposure with that which would be
made by the camera in an autoexposure mode.
The metering signals that appear during M
mode operation are as follows:
Exposure correctly set
Slide setting control to the
right
Slide setting control to the
left
mam
Light level beyond metering
range, correct exposure
cannot be determined
The - and + symbols indicate whether the
picture will be underexposed or overexposed,
respectively, at the current exposure settings.
41
BASIC INFORMATION
The camera determines exposure by evaluating
light reflected into the lens from your subject, a
system known as through-the-lens (TTL) me¬
tering. By selecting the way in which the re¬
flected light is evaluated, you can tailor the cam¬
era's metering system to suit either a particular
shooting situation, or a personal preference. The
camera's three metering modes, and their
indicator displays in the viewfinder and data
panel, are:
Multi-pattern: sc
Center-weighted average: se
Spot: cs
Multi-pattern metering is the camera's stand¬
ard metering mode, and gives correct exposure
in a wide variety of situations. In this mode, the
image area is divided into six segments from
which separate meter readings are taken. Un¬
like spot or center-weighted average metering,
multi-pattern metering integrates subject posi¬
tion data from the autofocus system; based on
autofocus data, light readings from the different
cell segments are combined to generate an ex¬
posure setting tailored to the subject. For gen¬
eral picture-taking situations, multi-pattern me¬
tering should give excellent results.