Light Meters

DavidUK

DavidUK

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Back to basics here... one of the things I've struggled to get a hold of is knowing which aperture/shutter combination to use in any given situation. Sure I know that the two have to be in balance to achieve the 'perfect exposure', but if I take a picture of a building I don't just think "ah.. F11 for this I think".

Question is, will a light meter help..? I know that using auto mode on my D70 or indeed F75 will to a degree give me a meter reading, but would it be advantageous to use an external meter..?
 
If you use your camera on full manual mode, it should act like a light meter anyway and give you an indication of of the relative exposure/aperture you need. e.g. you could meter off the sky byt pointing the camera at it, then meter off the ground likewise and take an average of the 2 readings to give an average metere reading for the whole shot. That's just an example btw, I wouldn't recommend doing it as it may cause exposure issues!

The only benefit a light meter will give you is the ability to take an 'incident' meter reading, i.e. the light falling onto the subject rather than the light reflected off of it into your cameras meter. can help with tricky eposures but you can get a similar effect from metering of a piece of 18%(?) card or at a push the palm of your hand!

Hope that doesn't serve to confuse you more.

Personaly, the only time I've ever used one is when the meter packed up on my old praktica camera, and I found it a lot of hassle.

It might teach you some stuff about exposure though?
 
DavidUK said:
Back to basics here... one of the things I've struggled to get a hold of is knowing which aperture/shutter combination to use in any given situation. Sure I know that the two have to be in balance to achieve the 'perfect exposure', but if I take a picture of a building I don't just think "ah.. F11 for this I think".
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A hand held meter wont help you to make this decision. Basically all that happens when you take a reading with the meter (having set the ISO on the meter), is that a needle deflects in accordance with how you took the reading and where from. You then rotate a dial to line that needle up with either another needle or an index mark, which results in giving you a series of shutter speed and aperture combinations on two aligned scales all of which will give correct exposure, but it wont make the decision for you which to use. That comes down to if you want deep DOF -small aperture, shallow DOF -large aperture. You pick the shutter seed depending on how important that is to subject or camera movement with the particular shot. :)
Question is, will a light meter help..? I know that using auto mode on my D70 or indeed F75 will to a degree give me a meter reading, but would it be advantageous to use an external meter..?
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Not to help you choose the right shutter speed and aperture combination David, that will always be your choice.

A meter will help you get a more accurate reading, but it's pretty useless unless you know how to use it, and one of the unfortunate things about the fantastic exposure systems in modern cameras, is that they've pretty well removed all incentive for newcomers to learn basic metering. I'll be honest, I have a meter but rarely use it, but I know by now the circumstances in which the camera metering is likely to let me down, which is more often than you may think, and I can compensate.

Clever as camera meters are, all they do is mix down all the tones on your focusing screen to 18% grey, which gives you perfect exposure for photographing ......18% grey cards. Thankfully, a lot of the scenes we photograph can be shot in that range, but not all by any means.

Try photographing a white sheet of paper which fills the frame and then a piece of black paper which fills the frame, you'll get two identical pictures of the same shade of grey because the metering just thinks "Ah 18% grey"

I'd have thought your course would cover this David, but my honest advice if you really want to get to grips with it, is get a book on the subject and sit down quietly and read it.

As gandhi says a meter would be useful and you could learn a lot from it but you really need to know how to use it. :)
 
CT said:
A hand held meter wont help you to make this decision. Basically all that happens when you take a reading with the meter (having set the ISO on the meter), is that a needle deflects in accordance with how you took the reading and where from. You then rotate a dial to line that needle up with either another needle or an index mark, which results in giving you a series of shutter speed and aperture combinations on two aligned scales all of which will give correct exposure, but it wont make the decision for you which to use. That comes down to if you want deep DOF -small aperture, shallow DOF -large aperture. You pick the shutter seed depending on how important that is to subject or camera movement with the particular shot. :)


Not to help you choose the right shutter speed and aperture combination David, that will always be your choice.

A meter will help you get a more accurate reading, but it's pretty useless unless you know how to use it, and one of the unfortunate things about the fantastic exposure systems in modern cameras, is that they've pretty well removed all incentive for newcomers to learn basic metering. I'll be honest, I have a meter but rarely use it, but I know by now the circumstances in which the camera metering is likely to let me down, which is more often than you may think, and I can compensate.

Clever as camera meters are, all they do is mix down all the tones on your focusing screen to 18% grey, which gives you perfect exposure for photographing ......18% grey cards. Thankfully, a lot of the scenes we photograph can be shot in that range, but not all by any means.

Try photographing a white sheet of paper which fills the frame and then a piece of black paper which fills the frame, you'll get two identical pictures of the same shade of grey because the metering just thinks "Ah 18% grey"

I'd have thought your course would cover this David, but my honest advice if you really want to get to grips with it, is get a book on the subject and sit down quietly and read it.

As gandhi says a meter would be useful and you could learn a lot from it but you really need to know how to use it. :)
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..you're right, the course does cover this but it's limited in the time we get (as it's only a night course)... and we haven't even covered the different metering modes available yet, or if we have it must have been so fast I missed it! :icon_eek:

I understand the concept of DOF, but what does annoy me a little sometimes is my D70 tends to produce dark images, I read in a review after I'd bought it that is has a tendancy to underexpose in low light conditions.

I've read in books before about 'metering for the sky' etc but I will be honest I don't thoroughly understand the concept... but that's all part of the learning process!

:)
 
gandhi said:
If you use your camera on full manual mode, it should act like a light meter anyway and give you an indication of of the relative exposure/aperture you need. e.g. you could meter off the sky byt pointing the camera at it, then meter off the ground likewise and take an average of the 2 readings to give an average metere reading for the whole shot. That's just an example btw, I wouldn't recommend doing it as it may cause exposure issues!

The only benefit a light meter will give you is the ability to take an 'incident' meter reading, i.e. the light falling onto the subject rather than the light reflected off of it into your cameras meter. can help with tricky eposures but you can get a similar effect from metering of a piece of 18%(?) card or at a push the palm of your hand!

Hope that doesn't serve to confuse you more.

Personaly, the only time I've ever used one is when the meter packed up on my old praktica camera, and I found it a lot of hassle.

It might teach you some stuff about exposure though?
Click to expand...


..for the purposes of my course I do use the camera on manual, but when I'm out and about I generally use Aperture Priority... in manual mode I reply on the cameras exposure meter visible in the view finder, but I'm not sure when the meter is being fooled so I'm unable to compensate. I've taken pictures before now based on the exposure meter and they look great on the day, but in post processing are incredibly dark :icon_eek:
 
DavidUK said:
but I'm not sure when the meter is being fooled so I'm unable to compensate. I've taken pictures before now based on the exposure meter and they look great on the day, but in post processing are incredibly dark :icon_eek:
Click to expand...

Referring back at CT's comments about taking a shot of something white and something black and ending up with identical shots what's happening is this.

With black the camera thinks "18% grey" and trys to brighten the imag from black to grey. To avoid this you need to underexpose the shot using the exposure compensation dial to reduce the light falling on the sensor and get it back to black.

For white subjects it's the opposite. The camera decides to dull down the scene so you need to let more light in, i.e. you need to add exposure to get white.
 
As you are using a D70, the best indication of them all is the histogram on the camera...use your metering as the camera reads it, take the shot and then review the histogram from the photo. You'll need to learn the basics of what the histogram tells you but if the graph is all bunched up to the left of the picture then it is telling you that it is underexposed and if it all bunched to the right then it's overexposed. There are times when the basics will not be enough though so you must learn the correct way to read the many different histograms so that you can be sure that you have the exposure that you where aiming for.

If you give me a minute I will find you some links…
 
I have a Minolta FlashMeter IV and the only time I use it is in the studio. The meters on modern cameras are superb and if you use them set to manual and meter off the part of the subject you are interested in, it's a good place to start.
Auto is good if you want an acceptable quick and nasty shot, but manual is for pros.
If my Master Phot saw my camera on any of the program settings, I'd get sacked on the spot. Or just filled in. He's a big bloke...
 
Arkady said:
I have a Minolta FlashMeter IV and the only time I use it is in the studio. The meters on modern cameras are superb and if you use them set to manual and meter off the part of the subject you are interested in, it's a good place to start.
Auto is good if you want an acceptable quick and nasty shot, but manual is for pros.
If my Master Phot saw my camera on any of the program settings, I'd get sacked on the spot. Or just filled in. He's a big bloke...
Click to expand...

..in a recent class we used some studio lighting/flash equipment. I thought the comments on the D70 underexposing were a little extreme when I got completely black results, then discovered the hotshoe attachment for the flash sync was the wrong way round :LOL:
 
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