Experimentation

[Digital]

During the summer of 2020 I purchased a Sekonic incident/flash meter from B&H in New York.
I wondered how the incident meter would match up against my built in camera meter. After taking a number of photos, the results of matching the exposures of both the incident, and the reflected metering, the results were quite in line with each other.
I had no intention of replacing the built in camera meter with the incident meter. The whole thing was an experiment, and I had quite a bit of fun doing it.



Bruce

[Manfred M]

I am both surprised and not surprised by your statement. If you were using the handheld meter in reflective mode and you use a relatively "normal" focal length (full frame equivalent of 50mm or close to it, I would not be surprised). A very long focal length lens or ultra-wide angle would not have given similar results other than in very specific conditions.

I use a hand-held meter a lot, but generally only in the studio when I am setting up a multiple studio light setup and working in incident metering mode. This type of work is impossible to do using the camera's metering system.

[Digital]

Manfred
Thanks for your comment. The average focal length when I compared the readings from both the incident meter, and the reflective meter was around 31mm.

Bruce

[pschlute]

During the summer of 2020 I purchased a Sekonic incident/flash meter from B&H in New York.
I wondered how the incident meter would match up against my built in camera meter. After taking a number of photos, the results of matching the exposures of both the incident, and the reflected metering, the results were quite in line with each other.
I had no intention of replacing the built in camera meter with the incident meter. The whole thing was an experiment, and I had quite a bit of fun doing it.



Bruce

Did you take any photos of a large black cat or large white dog ?

[Digital]

Peter, my subject was a log cabin at a local park.
No dogs or cats.


Bruce

[DanK]

I own two Sekonic meters and never use them, other than setting the ambient lighting level in the room where I edit.

I can see value in incident metering in some circumstances--Manfred noted one--but it's virtually never more useful than reflected-light metering for me. Digital has made this even more true, as it's zero cost and only a few seconds to redo a capture with a less than ideal metering.

For me, the key to metering scenes with complex lighting is understanding where the tails of the distribution are so that I can expose without clipping and ETTR. It's all a matter of what works for you, but I find the most valuable tool in those cases to be spot metering. Maybe this is partly because my first SLR had both spot and averaging metering, and my second one, which I used for years, was a Canon FTb that had only spot metering, so I learned to rely on it.

[Digital]

The one advantage I can see in using an incident meter is that it does not take into account the light from the background (i.e. light background or a dark background.) It measures light falling on the subject.
To Dan's point about spot metering, I guess the meter would not be "fooled" by the background light either.

Bruce

[Manfred M]

The one advantage I can see in using an incident meter is that it does not take into account the light from the background (i.e. light background or a dark background.) It measures light falling on the subject.
To Dan's point about spot metering, I guess the meter would not be "fooled" by the background light either.

Bruce

The advantage of an incident light meter is exactly what you have written Bruce, but that also limits its usefulness to scenes where this is happening. Portraiture and still life come to mind and of course the log cabin example. It would not work for most landscape work, wildlife, sports and action photography.

The handheld reflective light meter has exactly the same limitations as the one built into the camera in that the readings assume average reflectance regardless of what the meter is pointed at. As Dan points out, the same goes for a camera's spot metering mode or the spot metering head that can be fit onto a hand-held light meter (I have a 1 degree head for mine) means the user has to apply a correction to the meter reading to calculate the appropriate exposure.

Ultimately, I tend to rely on the histogram to judge my exposure, regardless of the metering mode. When I shoot tethered in the studio, I use Capture One's histogram, rather than the one built into my camera and I do watch to see what the individual colour channels are doing. That is something my handheld meter can't do.

[rpcrowe]

An exposure meter will ONLY give you a reading of the AMOUNT of light falling on or reflected by your subject.

In order to determine an exact exposure for any situation, you must use that tool located between your ears. All of us have this tool but. everyone doesn't use it equally as well.

For a generally evenly lit scene with no extreme highlights or shadows, we will usually get a decent exposure by using either a reflected or an incident meter with no great amount of mental calculation needed. However with extreme situations, neither type of meter will tell you exactly what your exposure should be.

If I am shooting a white dog in the snow, and I expose exactly how the reflected meter reads, I will get a muddy gray dog in muddy gray snow because the meter is telling me the exposure I need to use to get a mid gray image. I will need to increase the exposure to get a white dog in white snow.

If I am shooting a black cat in a black coal bin using a reflected meter, I will get a muddy gay image if I shoot at the meter's reading because the meter is telling me what exposure to use to get a gray image. I need to reduce the exposure to get the black cat as actually gray.

If I am using a incident meter, I need to go the other direction and reduce the exposure reading for a white subject and increase the exposure for a black image.

When I am shooting a very dark subject on a very light background or the other way around, I also need to adjust the exposure that the meter is recommending.

Nice thing about a mirrorless camera is that I can see the results of my exposure BEFORE I trip the shutter. Sure, I can chimp with a DSLR but, the DSLR will not show me what the image will be like before I press the shutter button!

However when using either a mirrorless or DSLR camera and either a reflected or incident meter, you can pretty well ensure nearly a perfect exposure by using exposure bracketing. In some instances, using exposure bracketing plus plus or minus exposure compensation will be a way to go.

Here is an example of the above. When shooting a city skyline at night, one of the greatest problems is overexposure of the lights or lighted areas. By using a -1 stop exposure compensation and a 3-stop bracketing, you will be certain to get at least one shot that is right on! Or you can use a mirrorless camera and see your exposure before you shoot!

[Digital]

I mentioned a spot meter in my post a few days ago.
My question is what are the advantages, and disadvantages of using a spot meter. One advantage is that it does not take into account generally either a light, or dark background.

Bruce

[Manfred M]

I mentioned a spot meter in my post a few days ago.
My question is what are the advantages, and disadvantages of using a spot meter. One advantage is that it does not take into account generally either a light, or dark background.

Bruce

The spot meter gives you a very accurate exposure reading of a small area of the image. It is useful when trying to understand the brightness distribution in a scene. As an example, I will use it in a studio setting to get a reading of how much light is hitting my background. I will often set my lights on a subject but want to ensure that the background is not getting more light than I want to get the image to look right ( I never want to blow out a white background or have a dark background go completely black). As I have mentioned before, I generally only use a hand-held meter in a multi-light studio environment.

Another example would be when shooting a back-lit scene and my subject is in shadow. By using the spot meter I can ensure that I get a good exposure of the shadow areas. In practice, it far easier and far faster to fire off a couple of test shots and not pull out the spot meter.

[lunaticitizen]

I've been looking for a Sekonic SpeedMaster for months without any luck. No particular reason to own one, just for fun. Now that Manfred mentioned it's of little use except for studio environment, and because I have no studio of my own, I'll probably just give up. Oh well.

[Manfred M]

I've been looking for a Sekonic SpeedMaster for months without any luck. No particular reason to own one, just for fun. Now that Manfred mentioned it's of little use except for studio environment, and because I have no studio of my own, I'll probably just give up. Oh well.

Back in the film days, when every shot had a significant cost associated with it, the light meter was a critical part of every photographer's tool kit. The cost of an image today is essentially zero, so doing test shots is how most photographers operate.

The only time this is not necessarily true is when working in a multi-light environment where the cost is the time spent getting the shot we are after. In that situation, a light meter like the Speed Master can save a lot of time. The radio trigger is a real time saver as one can get results without always walking back to the camera or tethered computer to fire off the flash units. Having the capacity to quickly switch from incident to reflective metering can cut down a lot of walking is a big studio.

My Sekonic L-358 with a 1 degree head was less expensive, but I have to manually change the head. In the Speed Master, both are built into the same device, which is a lot more convenient. I already owned the L-358 and the cost of upgrading to the Speed Master was just not worth it to me when compared to just buying the 1 degree attachment..

[DanK]

I mentioned a spot meter in my post a few days ago.
My question is what are the advantages, and disadvantages of using a spot meter. One advantage is that it does not take into account generally either a light, or dark background.

Bruce

The advantage or disadvantage depends on the circumstances.

The camera is simply giving you tools to make it easier to figure out how to accomplish your exposure goals. In most but not all cases where the dynamic range of the image is not too broad, my goal is to make sure neither end clips and that I'm exposing to the right. If I manage to do that, everything else can be done in post.

So, the question is: what might make it difficult to accomplish that? You then choose the tool that addresses that difficulty. if there is no difficulty, something like evaluative metering may be the quickest path.

In many cases, the lighting is even enough that evaluative metering comes close enough, or evaluative metering with a little bit of exposure compensation.

However, in many cases, (1) the lighting is very uneven, so the camera's computer algorithm doesn't work well (e.g., you have bright areas that will blow out), or (2) you are particularly interested in one specific area (say, a face), or (3) the average is misleading (e.g., when there is lots of snow, which you don't want to be neutral gray). In a case like that, you can use spot metering to figure out exposure for specific areas. I often use spot metering with manual mode so that the camera doesn't undo what I have figured out, but you can also use exposure locking for this purpose.

[Digital]

Incident Metering


This was an incident metering method. Exposure was 1/125 @f/16. ISO 200

[Manfred M]

Incident Metering


This was an incident metering method. Exposure was 1/125 @f/16. ISO 200

And you have a wide tonal range from deep shadows through to bright highlights. This is a good starting point for making local exposure adjustments to bring the best out of your capture. When I apply an average blur to this image, I get r=120, g=128 and b=118, so pretty close to the middle gray one would expect from and incident light reading

It all depends on what you are trying to achieve with your "correct exposure". If all you want to do is post this on social media, you are done. If you want to spend the time working on local exposure adjustments (dodging and burning) to improve the look, you have a strong base exposure to work with.

[Digital]

I have been watching videos on hand held metering. Simply put, I did not learn very much that has not already been stated in this thread.
One exception is that using a spot meter can help you figure out the dynamic range of your camera. My camera has a spot metering mode so I plan to use it more often.

Bruce

BTW: I can convert my Sekonic meter to a reflected meter (spot).

[Digital]

When I received my Sekonic meter two years ago, it did not have the instruction manual included. B&H emailed me a link in order to obtain the instructions. A few days ago, I discovered that the link had been removed.
Today, I contacted Sekonic, and requested a hard copy of the instructions. They are going to mail it to me.

Bruce

[William W]

. . . One exception is that using a spot meter can help you figure out the dynamic range of your camera. My camera has a spot metering mode so I plan to use it more often.

You might already know, however I believe this point is important to flesh out: most (all?) TTL Meters' "Spot Mode" are not Spot Meters.

For example my EOS 5Div's "SPOT MODE" is approx 1.3% of the Viewfinder, thus dependent upon the lens's FL - my Sekonic has a 1 degree AoV Spot Meter.

On another point -

. . .

I can see value in incident metering in some circumstances--Manfred noted one--but it's virtually never more useful than reflected-light metering for me. Digital has made this even more true, as it's zero cost and only a few seconds to redo a capture with a less than ideal metering.

Especially when on holiday and 'documenting': scenes, architecture, locals etc - i.e. where timing 'the moment' is not of great importance - I simply use Exposure Bracketing (mostly on Shutter Speed).

For somewhat a (jaded) purist, it is the lazy option; but it works a treat.

Similar to Dan I often use the Spot Mode: to calculate my middle exposure.

WW

[Digital]

Bill, thanks for the heads up on spot meters.
I can always use my Sekonic for spot metering.

Bruce