Experimentation

[Digital]

I have a UV filter on each lens I own. Does anyone know how that would effect the exposure if one uses a handheld meter?


Bruce

[Stagecoach]

I have a UV filter on each lens I own. Does anyone know how that would effect the exposure if one uses a handheld meter?


Bruce

Is there a difference with your camera metering depending whether the UV filter is fitted or not?

You could point the camera at a fixed light source, e.g. white monitor screen and test it.

[Manfred M]

I have a UV filter on each lens I own. Does anyone know how that would effect the exposure if one uses a handheld meter?


Bruce

Short answer is that you will loose a small amount of light; somewhere between less than 1% and 5%, depending on the quality of the filter (expensive multi-coated filters will lose at the lower end and cheap uncoated ones at the higher end. You should never notice the difference between shooting with and without filters.

[Digital]

Manfred, after giving it some thought I came to the conclusion that the loss of light via a UV filter would be negligible.

Bruce

[Digital]

Is it correct that when using an incident meter that the camera be in the same light as the incident meter?
I believe I am correct.

Bruce

[DanK]

No. The light falling on the camera isn’t relevant. The point of an incident meter is to measure light falling on the subject.


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[Manfred M]

Dan's answer is 100% correct. In incident metering, you have to measure the light falling on your subject. That's why it can be used for portraiture, still life work, etc. The light falling on your subject can be measured and the metering will take place at the subject.

If you are trying to measure the light for an action shot or a landscape, access to meter at the subject is going to be impossible and with landscapes, the subject could be miles away from your shooting position.

[DanK]

Bruce,

I thought about my answer, and I decided that a more complete one might help.

I think that you may be making this more complicated than it needs to be.

Only one thing matters: the light reflected from the subject to the sensor. The question is simply how to use one type of metering or another to give you guidance about how much to expose the sensor. One option is to measure directly the light reaching the sensor, which is what the camera's reflective meter does. If you go that route, you still have to decide what metering mode gives you the best guidance--averaging, evaluative, spot, or whatever. For cameras without reflective meters, the only option was to meter directly the illumination of the subject or scene, which is what an incident meter does. Or, if you are expert enough, judging that merely by looking. (If I recall correctly, Adams said that he did this with Moonrise Hernandez because of a lack of time.)

In neither case does the light falling on the camera matter because that light doesn't reach the sensor. For example, if you drape a waterproof cover over the top of the camera, the neither the meter readings nor the best exposure are affected.

The discussion about incident vs. various types of reflective metering is just a matter of which readings individual photographers find most useful under different circumstances. For example, I suspect that the main reason that Manfred uses incident metering sometimes and that I don't is that the only studio work I do is macro & closeup, where I'm interested almost entirely in the ends of the histogram, not the average. But some of it may be our individual work styles. Having grown up with only spot reflective metering, I'm simply used to thinking about regions rather than averages. Whatever works.

[Manfred M]

+1 to Dan's comments.

As I have written before, the only time I use an incident meter is when I do studio photography and then usually only when I use a multiple light setup. The reason is purely for efficiency; setting up a multi-light setup by trial and error takes a long time and I can do it a lot faster when I use a flash meter.

Like Dan, I do not use the same approach for every shooting situation and I will change my metering technique, depending on the shooting situation.

Regardless of which metering technique I use, I will always check my camera's histogram (the multi-channel histogram to ensure I am not clipping any individual channel) when I am setting up my series of shot. My goal in shooting is usually to get a good capture that will lend itself to post processing work; I really don't care if the straight-out-of-camera (SOOC) image looks good where I am doing "serious" photography.

If I do a quick snap just for social media, I will look try for a decent SOOC image.

[Digital]

Dan, and Manfred, thank you for your comments. That was very helpful.


Bruce