Ricoh GR matrix metering

[retinax]

Hello and a happy new year to everybody!
I'd like to hear about your experience with auto exposure of the GR (the APS-C sensor one). Altough I love mine otherwise, I'm not very happy with its AE. In matrix mode, it's been up to two stops off, mostly overexposing, but underexposure has also occured, this has happened even in rather easy lighting. Centre weighted metering has been a bit more reliable, but still often not much better than me, estimating the exposure. The span really appears to be between two stops over and two stops under. Spot metering works nicely, but the spot is too large in some situations, and it's not quick anyway.
I mostly end up shooting on manual, or in AE with -1.7 EV exposure compensation dialed in, in either matrix or centre weighted mode, and adjusting from there. This way, at least it won't overexpose and files can be saved in post when I hadn't had time to adjust exposure compensation, which I find a little finicky and in an unnatural position for my thumb.
While this way, I don't get overexposure, I sometimes get grossly underexposed files. So I'm wondering if people here have the same problems, and how they deal with them, or if maybe my camera has a problem. Maybe I should install new firmware..?
I realize that no AE is perfect and the exposure compensation buttons are there for a reason, but I'd expect the matrix metering to have a slightly better hit rate than centre weighted w/o compensation, but that doesn't seem to be the case...

 

[retinax]

Oh I forgot to add this: I had the suspicion that it might have something to do with how the camera focuses at open aperture, the stops down to working aperture to meter, and this might be screwed up when using snap focus speeding up the process, but couldn't confirm this in a quick test. Still maybe something like that happens sometimes?

And a related question: What setting for the jpg-images do people use in order to get a histogram that comes close to what is in the raw file, especially regarding overexposure?

 

[zuikologist]

I have always found the matrix metering and multi-WB to be very good on various versions of the GR series. This is likely a stupid question - are yo referring to under exposure as shown on a histogram or as seen on your monitor. -1.7ev should give you underexposure, so in that sense it is working correctly.

 

[retinax]

Hey, thanks for the reply, interesting that you're happy with the metering. I can see the exposure errors on the histogram as well as on my monitor. With -1.7 EV dialed in, I do sometimes get the underexposure that's to be expected, sometimes more, and at times a correct exposure. As I wrote before, the span is about 4 EV, 2 over to 2 under a nice exposure even under easy ligthting conditions. So with underexposure dialed in, I make sure I don't get too much exposure, because underexposure can be fixed in post, but my exposures seem still way too inconsistent.

 

[gilpen123]

I experienced this as well, it happened after I updated firmware to v4.0 mostly under exposed. Here are some samples...