I'm looking at the metering part of the 'Panasonic Lumix FZ30 vs Fujifilm FinePix S9000 Head-to-Head Review' http://www.digitalcamerainfo.com/co...sure--Focus.htm
If you'll look at the first picture (the Center-weighted test), you'll see the white background and the darker bag in the middle. The reviewer wrote: "We expected the Center-weighted exposure to be worse – it should have been fooled by the white background, and darkened the image. The Fujifilm FinePix S9000 behaved just that way – at f/3.8 at 1/80, its Center-weighted shot was a full stop darker than the Pattern shot".
I can't understand why. Because if the camera is in center-weighted mode, it should emphasize metering on the center. It should be fooled by the darker center and not by the white background. Than, the camera should try to insert more light in order to brighten the center, so the center-weighted metering should brighten the image… where is my mistake?

I suppose your confusion hinges on how 'centre' is defined. If the centre is larger than the subject, it would be confused by the light wall and so the camera's exposure reading would be determined by a combination of a.) the darker subject and b.) some of the lighter wall and therefore would underexpose. That said, it looks like a pretty big (dark) subject to me...

What do you mean by 'confused'? It's a mathematic formula; it's always a combination of the subject and the background, why it would be underexposed?

All I meant was that, if the centre being weighted is larger than the darker subject, then the exposure calculated will also include some of the brighter background, which will invariably throw the metering. I said 'confusion' because you asked about 'mistake'.

Thanks for your replay, but it doesn't help me to understand why this picture is darker when measured in center-weighted rather than in pattern...