It gets even better, read worse, in the four image series below. We were walking down a logging road and we knew there were two bears not far down a rather steep hill below us. One of them sensed us and made a break. He didn't know where we were on the road and he broke cover only about 30 feet from us and galloped up the road. I had time for 4 quick shots. I zoomed back to 100mm and fired away. The camera settings from EXIF as follows: aperture priority auto exposure, ISO 400, f8, one shot AF with central spot, partial metering,100-400 Canon @ 100mm. After the first photo experience shown above I figured partial metering mode would be safe - WRONG - read the manual. The camera selected shutter speeds were the failure in this series, and they are listed on each image below.

The shooting sequence starts upper left and goes clockwise. I would have never guessed that partial metering would have given so much exposure weight to the BLACK bear. I would have known better if I done a little refresher reading of the camera's operational manual before I left for this outing. 'Partial metering' gives the greatest weight to the central 8.5% of the image....Oh well.....At the time I thought partial was the same as 'center weighted averaging'. I should have used 'Evaluative' or the actual 'Center weighted Averaged' auto exposure metering mode. Also worth noting is that I probably would have been much better off using 'AI servo' mode for the auto focusing mode.

Due to the camera's 'partial metering' mode giving so much weight to the 'black' bear the shutter speeds the camera selected were not fast enough to produce sharp images. The camera metering system was just trying to achieve a 'middle gray' exposure average between the 'black' bear and the small area of 'bright background' that was in the central 8.5% of the viewfinder. The result was incorrect and very slow shutter speeds for ISO 400 at f8 in bright sunlight.

The bear was moving and I was panning the camera to follow the bear, lots of subject and camera movement. 1/500 to 1/800 sec might have been OK but for really sharp photos in this situation 1/1000 sec or higher would have been even better.  I believe focus was close to accurate. The end result of my inappropriate camera setup and letting the camera do the thinking for me was overexposed and blurry photos of a panicked bear. Not even good enough for a decent souvenir photo.