Light Meter
- Thread starter garyi
- Start date
michaelab
desafinado
Neither does a hand held light meter. The metering systems built into modern cameras will get you as close the exposure settings you're looking for as any hand held. If you're trying to do something tricky (like shooting against the sun) you'll then need to play with the exposure compensation dial/button.Mousey said:
One the beauties of digital is that you can do exposure bracketing (3 or more identical shots at different exposures) without wasting any film. You can also instantly see whether you got the exposure right or not.
Michael.
vuk
\o/ choose anarchy
igary.
cav says that you need to point the meter at the camera. i say that you need to point it at the light source. an incident meter measyres the light hitting the subject. from that simple information, i am sure you can figure out who's being the ****er...
vuk.
p.s. it's remarkable i get correct exposures pointing my meter towards the sun instead of at the camera, which in many cases would result in differences of about 5 stops.
cav says that you need to point the meter at the camera. i say that you need to point it at the light source. an incident meter measyres the light hitting the subject. from that simple information, i am sure you can figure out who's being the ****er...
vuk.
p.s. it's remarkable i get correct exposures pointing my meter towards the sun instead of at the camera, which in many cases would result in differences of about 5 stops.
vuk
\o/ choose anarchy
igary.
you point the meter in the direction of the light source *from the perspective of the subject*. i was just being blunt in the previous post to make clear that you don't point the thing at the camera.
cav: you are a little shit. what's the point of this? to deliberately confuse gary with misinformation just so you can enjoy your day's worth of malice?
vuk.
you point the meter in the direction of the light source *from the perspective of the subject*. i was just being blunt in the previous post to make clear that you don't point the thing at the camera.
cav: you are a little shit. what's the point of this? to deliberately confuse gary with misinformation just so you can enjoy your day's worth of malice?
vuk.
Derek Wright
pfm Member
Given that Gary is now using Raw so he has more control in the post processing and that digital cameras have a reasonably exposure tolerance one could also go back to the paper exposure guides that were supplied with the film.
Or one of these smart hand held calculators
Or one of these smart hand held calculators
matthewr
spɹɐʍʞɔɐq spɹoɔǝɹ ɹnoʎ sʎɐld
To take an incident reading you point the meter at the light as it falls on the subject. The rule about pointing the meter at the camera appears in all sorts of books but it's basically wrong. (Or rather its a rule of thumb that works most of the time but if you were interested in "most of the time" you might as well use a reflected meter in a camera.)
In the case of a backlit subject -- say a person in front of a window -- the subject is lit by the light from from the window being reflected back from the wall opposite the window. You should point your meter at this wall to measure the incident light falling on your subject and get a correct exposure of their face. If you point the meter at the window you will get a correct exposure of the back of their head wihch is not the subject and given the difference in lighting the subject (ie their face) will be underepxosed.
Another example: imagine a person facing North strongly lit by a window to the NE. The camera is to the NW and so when looking through the camera the right side of their face is brightly lit the left side is in shadow. Imagine also that I can be bothered to provide a diagram
Here you would normally point the meter towards the window. This would give you the correct exposure to show the brightly lit side of subject's face correctly and leave the left hand side in shadow.
You might, however, decide that the shaded side of the face is the subject (say most of their face is in shade). In this case you point the camera at the wall opposite the window to meter the reflected light from the wall (which is the incident light to the subject). This will give an exposure that shows the shaded side of the face but (possibly) blows out the highlights on the the lit side of the face.
In neither case do you point the meter at the camera.
Matthew
PS Alternatively paint all walls in your house Battleship Grey from the classic Humbrol range of model paints and just take a reflected reading of you wall with the camera.
PPS Gary Forget bokeh, forget light meters, practise pointing your camera in the right direction some more. Worry about the rest when you are doing well at that.
In the case of a backlit subject -- say a person in front of a window -- the subject is lit by the light from from the window being reflected back from the wall opposite the window. You should point your meter at this wall to measure the incident light falling on your subject and get a correct exposure of their face. If you point the meter at the window you will get a correct exposure of the back of their head wihch is not the subject and given the difference in lighting the subject (ie their face) will be underepxosed.
Another example: imagine a person facing North strongly lit by a window to the NE. The camera is to the NW and so when looking through the camera the right side of their face is brightly lit the left side is in shadow. Imagine also that I can be bothered to provide a diagram
Here you would normally point the meter towards the window. This would give you the correct exposure to show the brightly lit side of subject's face correctly and leave the left hand side in shadow.You might, however, decide that the shaded side of the face is the subject (say most of their face is in shade). In this case you point the camera at the wall opposite the window to meter the reflected light from the wall (which is the incident light to the subject). This will give an exposure that shows the shaded side of the face but (possibly) blows out the highlights on the the lit side of the face.
In neither case do you point the meter at the camera.
Matthew
PS Alternatively paint all walls in your house Battleship Grey from the classic Humbrol range of model paints and just take a reflected reading of you wall with the camera.
PPS Gary Forget bokeh, forget light meters, practise pointing your camera in the right direction some more. Worry about the rest when you are doing well at that.