Metering off your hand?

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R.Y.K. LEE

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Ray
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Hi guys,

I was out today with a friend of mine to shoot some photos and I noticed there was another person there who, every now and again, pointed his camera at his hand.

I was very curious about this as I didn't know what he was up to, so I asked him. He said he was metering the light, using his hand as a kind of DIY grey card. I asked him how did this work and he said he used his hand to meter the light falling on to it, and it would give him a guide line to expose for skin tones of the people who he was shooting in his shots (being that they are under the same light/amount of light).

Not sure if he was using the AE lock to lock the meter reading from his hand then compose and focus to take his shots though.

Have any of you guys seen this being done before, or do you guys use this technique yourselves? I am keen to know how this works in a more detailed explanation, does this work? Thanks in advance :)

Ray.
 
david1701 said:
.......... manual?

AE lock is irritating, even with back button AF AE lock is irritating
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Wasn't quite sure if he was shooting manual David, it was only a brief chat. That's all I managed to gather, that he was metering light off his hand :lol:
 
There's an excellent tutorial by TDodd in post 10 of this thread, he explains metering off the hand in detail.
 
It would have been manual, I have used this method before, it really is spot on, not just for people though, works really well on wildlife shots too, and any shots on the fly.
 
oh right with you now

course it works you can meter of ANY fixed tone +-2 stops of grey (or on a 1 series body +-3 stops), your hand is a fixed tone, it should be either 2/3rds under or over (I forget) but tbh that bit is to taste and hand colour (you will need different compensation if you are black to if you were a pasty white geek :D)
 
david1701 said:
bh that bit is to taste and hand colour (you will need different compensation if you are black to if you were a pasty white geek :D)
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No, it does not matter the colour of your skin, most of my afro mates have the same skin tone on their palms?
 
tbh its a technique for metering from a known tone, so you can meter from green grass or normal tarmac or your shoe or whatever :D
 
through practise i have found that out that my palm is about +1 from grey and about 1.5 below white on the 5DMKII. The way I set about identifying the tone of my palm was to photograph a white piece of paper in fairly neutral lighting, and adjusted my settings till the histogram just about clipped the right hand side and the highlight blinkies weren't coming up. I then pointed the camera at my palm to check where on the EV scale my palm was, and it came to just about +1. I tried this over and over in various lighting conditions and the results were largely consistent. In bright sunshine, I exposure my palm at around +2/3rds instead of +1, because white is more reflective under the sun and will have a higher chance of clipping.

Hope that helps.
 
It's also a technique advocated by Bryan Peterson in his tutorials. As mentioned by Hsuffyan you are meant to read off your palm at +1.
 
My hand is exactly 18% grey - which worries my doctor no end...
 
I've always had very good and satisfying results off the hand.........







:exit:
 
Thanks for all the help and advice guys, much appreciated :)

So can that +1 application be carried out via f/stop, shutter speed, iso. Or is it just for one of these parameters?

eg. If I wanted to apply this +1 but want to shoot wide open, I would use shutter speed or iso to achieve this. If I wanted low iso, I would apply the +1 via one of the two other parameters etc?
 
R.Y.K. LEE said:
Thanks for all the help and advice guys, much appreciated :)

So can that +1 application be carried out via f/stop, shutter speed, iso. Or is it just for one of these parameters?

eg. If I wanted to apply this +1 but want to shoot wide open, I would use shutter speed or iso to achieve this. If I wanted low iso, I would apply the +1 via one of the two other parameters etc?
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It is taking a "substitute reading" so it only works in manual.
You can change either the shutter speed or the aperture from the found exposure reading, but best not the ISO, or you will have to keep changing it back and forth. depending on whether you are using yor hand or not.(you will forget where you are)

You can not use exposure compensation in manual mode.
In effect you are using the camera as a hand held exposure meter.
 
It is taking a meter reading from a known tonal value, which you can use in two ways.

Because you know the brightness of your palm, you can use it to set the exposure by applying the right amount of adjustment to the reading you get. I think +1.3 stops is about right for most people. What you are doing is effectively taking an incident reading and measuring the brightness of the light, as opposed to a reflected reading of the scene, which is the brightness of the subject.

I think it is more commonly used though to check the exposure, by referencing a constant tone after you have set the exposure for the subject, but need to know if the light has changed due to clouds or whatever.

In this case, you would note the correct subject exposure that you have set, by whatever means, and then reference that against your palm and note the difference - say it's -2/3rds of a stop. You can then go back to your palm at any time and know that if you shift the exposure settings to maintain that -2/3rds difference, you will always be correct.

This is what pros do when they point their big lenses at the tarmac in a motor race, or the grass etc. They are just referencing a constant tone to make sure that their actual exposure maintains the right differential to that.
 
Arkady said:
My hand is exactly 18% grey - which worries my doctor no end...
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:) wouldn't it be brilliant if it were true - would make life so much easier
 
you take a reading in the lighting your subject is in...so you put your hand in front of you palm upwards and towards your face
set the camera on manual and then take a skin reading...palm skin...its usuall equivalent to neutrally pigmented skin on faces
use that as a datum
then


take pictures...you have a digital camera so you can take more than one with variations on the skin reading...i guess it could be called grey card...but really if you want g.c. readings....take a piece with you...
 
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