How Do You Meter?

providing the card is in the same position as the subject i.e. vertical, horizontal or whatever

I took that to refer to the absolute position of the subject, meaning that if the subject were vertical the card would be vertical. On this interpretation, nothing is said about the angle of the card to the light source. But we're getting beyond the terms of this thread so I'll shut up now :D
 
Nor the brightest highlight, Stephen. It can't judge anything. It just gives an equable reading. It assumes nothing but the falling light, and gives an average. There's no bias towards highlight or shadow, unless you factor that in with how you set the ISO of your chosen film on the meter.

We'll have to agree to disagree over this one then.
 
I think this is where I'm missing something obvious because I can't see where an incident reading is useful. Surely I always want to know what the exposure setting is for my subject. If it's a dark matt bottle it'll be setting a, and if a shiny bottle, setting b. I don't see how the same reading for two differently lit subjects helps. I could end up over exposing one bottle and under exposing the other. Neither of those is good. I want my subject exposed correctly - thus I want to point something at my subject and know what the settings should be for that... subject. I can then make a decision about what to under/over expose based on how important my subject is.

I'm still also not clear on the value of a lightmeter. At £200 for a Sekonic 308, I can get a second hand Fuji X-E1 or X-Pro1 (super cameras) for less money and be able to mess around with the exposure to get something I'm happy with by seeing the results... Are lightmeters over-priced? After all, I can get a whole camera for less? Or maybe I'm just trying to talk myself into an X100 here. Why buy a lightmeter when you can buy a camera that has a perfectly good meter built in? Is it simply the same reason that one shoots film rather than digital? Perhaps the crux of this is that it just sticks in my craw that a lightmeter costs more than a digital camera which does the job (arguably) just as well and gives you a photo to boot!

Hi Ian,

The scene:

Two bottles are side by side on a table in your garden being lit by natural daylight, one of the bottles is shiney and one matt. Your Camera is on a tripod a few feet away to take the photograph.

Place your incident light meter next to the bottles with the Lumidisc pointing at the camera and take a reading - this will be the correct exposure for the photograph and the shiny bottle will record as shiny and the matt as matt.

If you took a reflective light reading from each bottle the meter may well indicate different exposures for each bottle which is WRONG - the meter has been fooled by the way the light is reflected from each surface.

In respect to your second paragraph a camera can not measure flash exposures and again uses reflected light which can be 'fooled'. A light meter is a great tool when you use fill flash or studio work as well, making lighting ratio's or percentage fill flash very easy to work out.

Quick video:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYtRMHR7lek
 
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I took that to refer to the absolute position of the subject, meaning that if the subject were vertical the card would be vertical. On this interpretation, nothing is said about the angle of the card to the light source. But we're getting beyond the terms of this thread so I'll shut up now :D

That's right as I found with the sun high (midday) there is a difference taking a reading of the Kodak grey card when it's vertical and horizontal...but I was thinking that you were saying "meters are calibrated at the factory with a light source directly above with a Kodak grey card positioned at 45 degrees".
Anyway we are all talking about getting the exposure spot on and then using old film cameras and don't even know if the shutter speeds are accurate, is the lens aperture exactly what is says, does film have a manufacturing tolerance is 200 ISO exactly 200 ISO.... if all the tolerances add up against you it probably won't make any difference using neg film but could make a difference using positive film.
 
the meter will give a reading that will cause the subject to be recorded as a mid grey. Point it at the proverbial black cat in a coal cellar and the photograph will show a grey cat. Make that a white cat against snow, and you get a grey cat again.

The producers of Spitting Image ( for those of us who remember the program!) obviously metered incorrectly as John Major always came across like these cats...MID GREY!:D :coat:
 
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Best advice from me is to leave meter at home ( or simply don't invest in one), shoot photographs, ** assess results,learn what camera settings work for different light situations, go out and enjoy shooting more film with the confidence that your shots will be correctly exposed:)

P.S **Possibly using sunny F/16 as a base guideline
 
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The producers of Spitting Image ( for those of us who remember the program!) obviously metered incorrectly as Kohn Major always came across like these cats...MID GREY!:D :coat:

Well the Hollywood film makers (using colour film) used a special filter that showed everything in shades of grey (like what an exposure meter sees) and quite a lot of things in a scene are the same or near Kodak grey and that's why joe public are happy with their photos. Kodak originally must have thought about it and chose this particular shade of grey for their grey card and meter manufacturers followed Kodak setting a standard.
 
Possibly using sunny F/16 as a base guideline

Do people really use the sunny 16 rule and guess their exposure with 4x5 or 8x10? The thought of doing this with my 6x17 makes me feel ill.
 
Do people really use the sunny 16 rule and guess their exposure with 4x5 or 8x10? The thought of doing this with my 6x17 makes me feel ill.

Yup, well with 4x5, it was either that or a two hour hike back to the car for a mater. Negatives were decent enough too. Most of us here have enough experience to reasonably accurately gauge exposure with negative film (if not use portra) .

I like a spot meter for a guide to the DR and as a bit of a crutch but I can get by with out it.
 
I was watching a documentary video the other day (that was linked in the F&C section of the forum) about an American photographer that's been using a large format camera to capture documentary style photos for decades (I can't remember his name now!). Anyway, I noticed he was still using an old Lunasix 3 (although called a different name in America) type light meter. I also noticed he seemed to be taking reflective light meter readings and pointing the meter downward at about 30 degrees to do this (which is the method I tend to use with this meter). In effect, he was taking what amounted to an average reflective light reading from the scene.

This made me think; it's not just using a light meter you need to master (settings, controls, deciphering the readings with the old dial type ones, etc.), it's how to use it (where to point it, etc.) to get the exposure you want. You'll only really achieve this knowledge with trial and error, unless you're taking incident readings to get black and white. So there was probably a good reason he was still using what appeared to be an old Lunasix 3 type meter... he was used to it and had learnt how to use it!

So before you go out and buy a shiny new meter with digital display and nano-spot flash options or whatever, perhaps ask yourself how long will it take to get to know it thoroughly, will you actually shoot enough film to get used to it, and will you remember all that in between bouts of using film cameras with built-in meters?

As for using a meter to deal with dappled sunlight in a woodland setting, the difference between light and dark areas will often be too much for the dynamic range of the film (or digital sensor) anyway, and a light meter won't fix that, so you'll have to go for an average light meter reading, and potentially miss the 'correct' exposure on both extremes, or choose which one you love the most and rescue that! ;) :)
 
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I think this is where I'm missing something obvious because I can't see where an incident reading is useful.
Apologies for getting back a tad late, the need for sleep and having to meet a client this morning got in the way.... Fraser has given a good comprehensive answer.

Basically any form of metering will try to expose your film so that the area that you have metered reproduces as the oft mentioned 18% grey, an incident light reading measures the light that is falling on your subject/scene disregarding how reflective or not the subject is, but assumes that all the tones present will be evenly distributed from black to white, in theory this has the potential to give a more accurate reading.

A reflected reading measures the light reflected from your subject/scene, if the subject/scene is predominantly darker tones the reading will attempt to push those darker tones to that mid grey and vice versa so you will need to compensate.

Using a spot meter allows you to control where those mid tones will be as well as indicating whether the range of tones within the subject/scene will also be recorded within the curve of the film.

At the end of the day with all handheld metering options will still need you to apply some compensation and IMO should only be treated as a guide to the correct exposure.
 
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I keep looking at lightmeters, then at their price, then get confused by what they do. What I want is a cheap thing I can point at a location and get exposure settings for that location.

So for example in a high dynamic range scene, I want to be able to meter the highlights and the shadows so I can make a good guess as to what exposure I need, or a rough starting point for bracketing. I may want to meter off a tree, or the grass, or my palm...

Historically with film, I've used the internal meter or just gone on Auto, and with my current AE-1 this isn't a problem. I'm more talking about when you don't have a meter available in your camera. Before getting into medium format, I've used a DSLR or CSC to meter the scene, then copied from that.

However now, I'm using a (99p to remove ads) Lightmeter app as I'm not taking digital kit out with me any more. For the majority of my photography (normal dynamic range stuff) it's done a grand job. It's convenient, easy to use, and works. However recently, in difficult lighting, it's let me down, under-exposing my images by at least 2 stops.

I'd love to use a lightmeter. But at the prices they're at, I'm wondering if it's not just cheaper to buy a digital camera that's small & cheap to get settings (and also to preview a scene at a given focal length before unpacking the MF kit).

So for those of you that don't have the luxury of an internal meter - what do you do?

I think the problem with phone apps or digital cameras for metering is that they're based off slide film exposure - protecting the highlights, hence the under exposure in high contrast situations.

What are you doing with your negs after ? Scanning or wet printing ?
I work with neg scans in Lightroom, and still use a phone app meter. In high contrast I'll just meter for the shadows with the apps spot meter and pull back the highlights in post. Yet to have any highlights that aren't recoverable.
 
What are you doing with your negs after ?

Scan then inkjet print.

I was getting decent exposures from it, using my TLR, 6x17 and RB67. It was literally only last week with some dappled light forest images that I ended up with under-exposed images. I did wonder whether it was perhaps the film (it was my first time using Rollei 400) but after the bad shots, there were some that were fine.

Thanks for all your help on this thread everyone. It's now a useful resource for me to go back over at my leisure. @Mr Perceptive - I'll PM you back in a bit :)
 
I used to use the family's cheap point and shoot digital camera (think it was a Canon a460) to meter when shooting with my Mamiya c330. Always got good results!
 
I used to use the family's cheap point and shoot digital camera (think it was a Canon a460) to meter when shooting with my Mamiya c330. Always got good results!

Good man, you can't go wrong with a C330 (y)
 
T'is why Andy has a slave, sherpa, Mrs Snap to carry his:D

No slave/Sherpa/Mrs Snap required, it rarely leaves the house.:D
 
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