[Leica] Metering the highlights. Help!

["Khoffberg" <khoffberg@email.msn.com>]

I think it was Ted who brought up that old piece of wisdom of metering for
the highlights (when shooting slide film) and letting everything else fall
where it may.  I've heard this before but confess that I don't know that I
always understand what that really means.  Here's and example.

Tonight I was shooting over by my favorite broken down pier.  There's a
rotted out metal row boat I placed in the foreground, water in the mid to
background, and rotted piers in the background (nice reflections in the mid
ground).  So the frame from bottom to top was: boat resting in the mud,
water (seen through the boat as well), reflections, and pylons.  The boat
spot metered at about EV 7, the water around 10 (late in the day with heavy
overcast so the color was steel gray), the pylons and reflections around 7
or 8.  I was using E100S.

So the question is,  what would you expose for?

I decided I wanted very little if any detail in the boat hull so that
started me off at EV 9.  This also put the water at zone VI or more.
Conversely, I suppose I could have decided that I wanted the water a little
hot and put it at zone VI and arrived at pretty much the same exposure.

So Ted (or anyone else), if you're reading, what do you mean by metering for
the highlights?  If the hottest reading in the scene is the water at EV 10,
what exposure value do you shoot?

PS.  For whatever it's worth, I spot read a gray card at just under EV 9.
Kevin Hoffberg