Very true. The 300/350/400/450 series have evaluative, partial and centre weighted average and that's yer lot. I must presume the lower end of the Nikon range is similar.

What would you recommend to work best with the zone system, Nick?

If a camera doesn't have spot metering, then you could always get hold of a 18% grey card. Place the card somewhere where it is in the same lighting conditions as your subject, and meter for zone 5, ensuring the card fills the viewfinder completely when you take the reading. If you are using manual, then your exposure will be fixed and you should get the right result, assuming the light doesn't change in the meantime.

Might be a basic question, but what is the benefit of using this instead of say, shooting in aperture mode, spot or matrix metering, metering off the spot you want to expose correctly, lock the exposure and refocus/compose?

Or, in conjunction with our other thread on cleaning, there are lens clothes out there which are 18% grey, and come in a variety of sizes. Maybe easier to cart about than a piece of card in some circumstances.

It's a fair point. There are two disadvantages to this method:
1) Semi-auto mode on a camera will usually only allow 2 stops exposure compensation either side, so you can't get beyond zones 3-7;
2) AE lock is (generally) only temporary; with manual, you get the same exposure until you change it, and beyond just the one shot, allowing you to shoot several pictures without having to expose every shot individually.

As long as you can keep them flat enough so there are no creases and associated variations in shade!

Where's your spirit of adventure?

Sorry, I missed which camera you have, but I am assuming that it is a low-end Canon like mine. The Centreweighted average metering mode is "...set automatically in the <M> mode. The metering is weighted at the center and then averaged for the entire scene."

Now, having read my manual yesterday, I had missed this bit and thought that like all of the Creative Modes , Manual was partial metering, which is not spot, but still only the centre of the viewfinder. NOW, I find that it's Centerweighted average.

This makes me think that one of two courses of action can be considered- If using a zoom lense, could you not zoom in and fill the viewfinder with the lightest part of the image, set the camera and then zoom out and compose the shot, assuming that circumstances allow this?

Or, considering that it is centerweighted, get as much of the bright part in the center of the viewfinder and bearing in mind that it will probably slightly over-expose once the shot is composed based on the surrounding dark areas, drop the exposure a third, half or even a full stop depending on how dark the rest of the scene is?

It seems like a good plan to me and has to be simpler than messing around with bits of card. If I've missed something, fair enough.

That will work, to an extent. There will be a lot more trial and error involved if you're not using an 18% grey card. If you zoom, the exposure with the lens at its longest setting may not be the same as when you zoom out again, so I don't think that will be a reliable method. It all depends how badly you want to get to grips with manual exposure; if you start with a basic understanding of the zones, and can get a feel for how dark or bright you want a scene to appear, then you're 90% of the way there. The method I've described just leaves you with less margin for error.

Cheers . I will have to start trying this technique a bit more.

I see where you are coming from and I really am not sure on the zoom business, but the way I see it, the shot that you show in your demonstration is taken with spot metering, whereas I would have to put up with centreweighted average at the moment. I take this to mean that it would expose more than I would wish on account of the darker areas of the trees despite being weighted towards the centre that I will have used to set the exposure for the sunny foreground.

Assuming, that some of the darker background is clearly visible around the frame when I meter the exposure, this will surely be taken into account by the "average" component of the metering, and would therefore give a greater exposure than your camera would using exactly the same method.

Were I to simply knock the exposure down a partial stop or three, I would compensate for the issue myself, but taking three shots at three different settings has to be quicker and easier than playing around with cards, nonetheless. I guess that with a little trial and error, I would soon get a feel for it.

I know what you are saying would be the correct way to expose first time, but obviously, there will be circumstances where placing bits of card in shot would not be possible anyway.

Yes, you're absolutely right. As you say, you'll need to take account of areas outside the subject of interest that may fool the camera. Auto-bracketing by about 2/3 of stop should help in these circumstances.