I managed to photograph a red flower

[DaveW]

No sun reduces the contrast range of the image Ian, hence there is less chance of highlights burning out as with your picture, but highlights often do with plants taken in full sun in summer when most of our plants flower, which was probably the problem you had with them in the past.

With digital you usually expose for the highlights and let the shadows take care of themselves. If your highlights are burning out you need to give less exposure, which is what the Exposure Compensation feature is for on most modern DSLR's. That assumes you are taken them with a camera having that function?

https://digital-photography-school.com/ ... -exposure/

The other feature many higher end modern cameras have is a function often referred to as the "blinkies". This usually does not come ready activated, you have to go into the cameras menu and set it. When you look at the picture you have just taken any exposed highlights will flash to indicate this and using the Exposure Compensation control you can reduce exposure until they disappear, but don't forget to set the Exposure Compensation control back to normal afterwards or you will have underexposed pictures for normal scenes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em8XuFIOOIg

It is best to steer clear of spot meter reading unless you really understand the Zone System, since the area the spot measures will render it as 18% or mid grey, which is not always the correct exposure. If you point a spot meter at a white sheet of paper it will set the exposure to render it mid grey, also if you point it at a black sheet of paper it will render that mid grey too. Only pointing at a mid grey paper like a Kodak Grey Card for setting exposure would it give the correct reading for it's exposure.

Unless the spot is on a part of the subject with an 18% mid grey reflectance any reading the spot meter gives has to be corrected to put that tone in the correct place on the Zone System scale. Colour is irrelevant since camera light meters do not see in colour only in black and white as though you were taking a monochrome picture, which is correct for colour images too. When I did night school photography decades ago we were taught the following for portraiture when taking a spot meter reading off the sitters face.

Caucasian Skin, plus 1 stop exposure, as the spot meter reading will underexpose it to a mid grey value.

Asian Skin, the spot meter reading, since it usually = mid grey tonal value.

Black African Skin, minus 1 stop exposure, since the spot meter reading will over expose to a mid grey value.

Therefore, unless pointed at an area having the equivalent of an 18% grey reflectance a spot meter reading must always be corrected to put the area measured in the correct tonal zone for exposure. Obviously if you point a spot meter at a white tone or highlight it will stop it burning out, simply because it underexposes it to the much lower 18% grey tone than it should be without any exposure correction to the spot reading.

http://www.alanrossphotography.com/can- ... digital-2/

Most proper hand held spot meters measure a one degree spot. The problem with in-camera spot meters is the spot measured is larger than this and also alters according to the focal length of the lens fitted. Therefore for greater accuracy you should always spot meter with a telephoto lens fitted since with a wide angle one the spot will pretty well cover the whole frame. However most cameras do not indicate this as the spot indicator shown in the viewfinder does not change size with the lens fitted.

For most of us who cannot remember the Zone System, the spot metering function on modern cameras is best avoided through using things like "the blinkies" or histogram instead and then taking another photo using exposure compensation to correct the exposure.

[DaveW]

I should have added for those who do not know what a proper spot meter looks like. As you can see from the link it has a fixed lens which produces a one degree spot which is set by the makers. The spot focussed on by a spot meter in your interchangeable lens camera is much larger so is far less accurate than a proper spot meter. As said, the reading needs to be adjusted to what tone the spot is on to put it on to the correct zone for exposure.

Why do I get reasonable results using the camera without correcting the spot reading then? Probably because the spot with that focal length lens is so large it is not just covering the highlight chosen in the viewfinder, but has become in effect the old type Centre Weighted Metering covering other tones surrounding the highlight as well which are largely correcting the exposure. But that rather defeats the purpose of spot reading, since you may as well have used Centre Weighted Metering in the first place.

As said before, the Zone System was developed for monochrome film photography, as was spot metering, and the Pentax Spot Meter was evidently the one Ansel Adams used to invent his system. However it works for colour and digital too. But with digital we have other methods not available on film cameras, such as instant images of the shot we have just taken on the viewing screen, plus other aids like the "blinkies" and histogram which probably make spot metering redundant.

https://www.raylarose.com/words/zone-me ... spot-meter

Modern metering like matrix metering in Nikon and Canon cameras uses multiple points over the screen to assess the scene and then bases the exposure on multiple similar exposure examples stored in it's memory (the wonder of the microprocessor). However for in camera spot metering you will see the following link only claims the spot at best covers at least 5%-8% of the scene, which is a great deal more than the one degree angle of a proper spot meter.

http://www.thedigitalprocess.com/basics ... -metering/

Generally with digital we should expose for the highlights, so if you get the "blinkies" on the viewing screen just use the Exposure Compensation Dial to reduce the exposure and take more shots until they disappear, far easier than using the Zone System and spot metering.

There are two type of highlights that were traditionally allowed to "burn out" from the days of monochrome photography. They are specular highlights, produced by light hitting ripples on water on say a lake, or highlights off mirror like surfaces such as chromium car bumpers etc. But certainly not on flower petals which should have a slight degree of density.