How do you meter when the sun goes down?

Knikki

Knikki

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Nick (yes there is more than one of us)
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So if you are near a well light building then I suppose you can meter from the lights. :shrug:

But what if you somewhere where it is very dark and you want to get star trails?
Or if late at night you in a street photographing in a dimly lit area?

Trust what the camera/hand held meter says?
Go for a huge bracketing range?

Mind you that may be a long night if your doing star trails :suspect:
 
Are you talking about your film or digital camera? With digital I take a test shot at maximum ISO, widest aperture with the camera on evaluative metering. Exposure composition as neseccary, then narrow your aperture, turn the iso down and multiply shutter speed accordingly.
With film, haven't a clue I'm afraid. I'd be inclined to take a compact camera with me and use that to test the water and use that as a base to work from.
 
This will make sense.........

With either one, i do the following, you have to work "Stops" in your head.

For F Numbers

PHP: 
AV 	-2 	-1 	0 	1 	2 	3 	4 	5 	6 	7 	8 	9 	10 	11 	12 	13 	14
f/# 	0.5 	0.7 	1.0 	1.4 	2 	2.8 	4 	5.6 	8 	11 	16 	22 	32 	45 	64 	90 	128

And for Shutter Speed its much easier.

1/4 is one stop over 1/8, and 30 seconds 1 stop over 15 seconds


Put the camera in your eye, look at the view finder and half press the shutter and you'll see the TTL metering telling you that you are under exposed. Now move the Aperture to as wide as you can, F/4 may be, and then move the shutter speed to as slow as you can, until the metering needle get towards the middle - 0. You can even move the ISO too in digital.

Now, the tricky bit, if you are taking star trails, you want a long shutter speed and a high F/ Number, so you move the aperture down the list, but everytime you move a stop, you have to double your time. So in Manual, using the dials, move the stop one at a time, if it get pass the 30seconds, then you'll have to use bulb mode and work out in your head how long to open the shutter for and look at your watch for timing, unless you have a timing cable release.
 
If your meter will register, then you are in with a chance. Should be okay for street scenes, but not a hope with star trails obviously.

If the meter is no help, then it's just experience and guess work. With digital, keep on testing and checking the LCD/histogram until it looks okay.

With film, make your best guess, bracket like heck, say a prayer, double check reciprocity tables, do a rain dance and cross everything.

Luckily with most night scenes, quite a wide range of exposures can often look okay even if they are technically not optimum.
 
You will often find an auto exposure giving you a photo far lighter than you would like, so you'll have to dial in some under-exposure, or do it manually.
 
Many many years ago I used to take exposure readings in a room by pointing the hand held meter directly at the main light source from the main subject. That will give a reading that is 4 1/2 stops too much. you can then simply adjust by 4 1/2 stops.

This is exactly the same principal as using an incident meter.
 
For lit buildings, I tend to iffitt. I'll make a guess, take a pic then look at the result on the screen. Iffitt's too dark, I'll add an apropriate amount of time (or open up if I have room to do so) and try again and iffitt's got too many blown bits, I'll speed up or stop down.

For star trails, this link may help http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/stu/me/tpf/trails.pdf . Aperture and shutter speed depend very much on exactly what you're trying to achieve and how little light pollution there is around. Again, I'll tend to guestimate and retake if necessary.

The pic below was taken to capture the 'plane coming in to land and the ship moving on the horizon. ISO 400, focal length 22mm (1.5 crop body), 230 seconds , f/3.8. Sorry about the slight motion blur - the camera was just resting on a beach sunbed IIRC!
2329250624_2e51fa327f_o.jpg
 
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