Generally a bad Idea.
But if you meter with a handheld meter rather than TTL, you might include cloudy areas and bright sunny areas in your metering while actually photographing only one of those.
If you meter with a handheld meter, you’re generally taking an incident reading.
How can you take an incident reading of a distant subject?
WTF?
Distant mountain lit by sun, you lit by sun... incident reading of the sun is the same.
I need to ask; have you ever used a handheld meter? Or are you assuming something incorrectly.
If you are good at judging "middle grey" from a color scene, ok. Or if you average a bunch of readings, ok. Or if you are good at offsetting a spot reading (i.e. white), ok. But an incident reading is generally easier/better.
Church nestling in a Lincolnshire wold in sun, me on top of next wold in shade, incident reading is nothing like.
Yes, usually - and successfully.
Sure, if you are in different light it's a problem... chances of the mountain being in shade while I'm in sun are slim. Chances of me being in shade and the mountain in sun, much higher. But I can just walk out from under the shade and take the reading.
Spot metering is one of the most difficult skills to obtain. Unless you have a known 18% tone to measure, you have to measure something else and ‘guess’ how far out from average it is.
So you do understand that an incident reading isn’t ‘viewing a scene’, so I’m puzzled by your answers.
Yes, I fully understand. With incident metering you measure the light falling on the subject. If the subject is distant, you cannot rely on the light being the same. With subjects a bit smaller than a mountain and a mile or so away, the light can be very different.
I have no idea what you think you’re posting.
Other than you being in shade and the distant location being in sun, the light can't be very different.
I'm intrigued by this thread! Living in the west of Scotland, and recently on the Isle of Skye, I can guess that the chances of a distant mountain being lit by sun at the same time as I am being lit by sun is probably an awful lot less than 50:50 - never mind the difference in sunlight intensity due to variable cloud cover. Moving isn't likely to help much - the mountains themselves tend to produce cloud, due to saturated air masses being lifted further above sea level, and condensing to produce cloud, drizzle or rain. Or anything inbetween. Depending upon which side of the hills you are, it's fairly common to be standing in bright sunshine looking at a hazy midground and a background which is very dark & cloudy, but with very bright patches of sky. I'm not sure how an incident light reading is going to help me much here, but please do correct me if I'm wrong (I'm definitely no expert!).
Perhaps you could ask Roberts to run along to the distant subject you wish to take a photograph of, instruct him to take an incident light meter reading and communicate the information to you via one of those two-way wireless radio sets. Quickly adjust the controls of your camera accordingly, check with Roberts that nothing has changed, then instruct Roberts to hide himself smartly immediately prior to pressing the shutter release button. There we are, problem solved and, as usual, it was nothing that the sensible employment of a good servant couldn't resolve.
Bracketing! Are you mad Brian that’s opening a whole new kettle of worms.h'mm incident light reading? you are under cover in pouring rain but your subject is in bright sunshine (as some one said similar i.e. you could be on a hill and a beautiful lake and valley in the distance is lit up by a large shaft of sunshine)....well surely for a winning shot it's worth bracketing after getting an approximate reading from your camera or separate exposure meter of the subject.....anyway that's what I would do
