- Messages
- 8,318
- Name
- Ian
- Edit My Images
- No
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?
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?