Adventures of an Idiot - occasional ramblings of a photography freak

Sometimes I really do regret having been born with certain deficiencies in the thinking and memory department, particularly when it comes to gadgetry and techie-type things, and… aargh… icons!
I’d like to be able to attribute it to approaching senility, or the consumption of significant amounts of alcohol, but unfortunately its a deficiency that seems to have dogged me for most of my life.

And it was inevitable that it wouldn’t be too long before it started manifesting in my new-found love of cameras and things photographic. It actually happened a coupla weeks back during my session in Wilstead Wood, and reappeared again a few days ago during the Shocott Spring shoot (although I have a strong suspicion its occurred before and I just hadn’t picked up on it), but I only actually discovered it yesterday. Purely by chance.

To explain…

This little switch on the GX10

is the Metering Mode Lever, neatly encircling the Mode Dial. (Disregard all the crud and dust surrounding it… that’s just me being my normal messy self.) Its for manually selecting either multi-segment metering, centre-weighted metering, or spot metering, and impacts exposure.
I know it is, and I know that’s what it does, and I know that’s what its for… cos I’ve used it before, particularly when I was doing some evening and night shots in town last year. And I read it in the manual!

And this little switch

is for selecting the Focusing Area, or “AF point”, offering a choice between auto selection of the optimum AF point, manually selecting one of multiple points through use of the four-way controller dial, or setting the focusing area to the centre of the viewfinder.
I know that’s what its for, and I know that’s what it does cos I’ve used it before, and I read it in the manual.
That said, I do have a bit of a tendency to ignore it, much preferring to select the AF point simply by pointing the camera at the intended subject, pressing the shutter thingy half-way down to fix the focus, then recomposing the shot (if I want to), and finally doing the clicky business. Got that whole procedure down to a fine art now. And it seems so much better than fiddling around with dials and stuff.
Either that or I’ll simply switch to manual focus and twiddle the focus ring on the lens.

On top of which, the little icons are a clear clue as to the differing functions of the respective controls. Aren’t they?

Well, during the Wilstead Wood shoot, back a bit, I had major hassles with exposure. Definitely a case, I thought, of pressing the Metering Mode thingy into service. But to no avail. Just couldn’t seem to get it right. Eventually overcame the exposure problems (half-way at least) by a judicious combined manipulation of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO… and a helluva lot of luck.
Similar problems reappeared (though not to the same extent fortunately) during the Shocott Spring session. And were dealt with in much the same way.
All down to the really bright sunlight of course.

However, this exposure issue had been niggling away in the back of my mind so yesterday I decided to refresh my understanding of the whole business by re-reading the relevant bit of the manual.

Which is how I discovered that the old thinking/memory deficiency had been having its ugly way with me again.

For what I want to know is, why the hell had I been trying to adjust the exposure mode using the bloody Focusing Area switch???