Ambient, Reflected, or Spot Meter?

snegron · Jun 7, 2007

I'm sure this has been discussed here numerous times in the past, but I'm still not clear on the subject. Which hand held meter would work best in the following situations. The camera has no internal meter.

Situation 1: I am standing in a shaded area under a group of trees just before sunset and I see an exotic bird about 100 feet away in an open field. There is no shade on the bird, just the light on the late afternoon/early evening falling on it. I can't walk up to it to get a reading because it will fly away. Lens is a 200mm.

Situation 2: I am at the park with my child and there is little shaded area. My child decides to sit in the shade under the slide. I am standing under direct sunlight. Lens is a 50mm.

Situation 3: I am walking on a semi-crowded street during a street festival under the shade of a building. I spot an interesting shot of street performers across the street also under the shade of the buildings. There is very bright sunlight falling on the middle of the street separating me and my subject. Also, I can't cross the street to get a meter reading because there are steel barriers on both sides of the street preventing anyone from crossing the street. Lens is a 105mm.

Which type of meter would be more suitable for the above situations?

Nick Zentena · Jun 7, 2007

Spot meter will work in all three if you take the time.

The second one is the only one an incident meter might handle.

BTW all three are ambient light. A spot meter is a reflected meter.

David A. Goldfarb · Jun 7, 2007

In addition to what Nick says, you could use the sunny 16 rule instead of a meter in situations 2 and 3. Exposure will be 1/ISO sec. at f:16 in the sun, add three stops for shade.

David H. Bebbington · Jun 7, 2007

Situation 1: Incident light reading no good unless you can get meter under same lighting as subject. Reflected light metering will work as long as the angle is narrow enough to exclude the shadow area. Need not be a spot meter. If you use a spot meter, you must meter a zone 5 area or adjust your reading accordingly.
Situation 2: Incident OK if you can walk up to the subject and put the meter in the shade, pointing at the camera. Narrow-angle reflected fine if you meter only shaded area.
Situation 3: Incident OK if you can meter a shaded area like the one the subject is in, otherwise same as 2).
Spot always correct if used correctly and with appropriate allowances (mainly if you meter an area which you do not want to render as zone 5).

Regards,

David

snegron · Jun 7, 2007

I have never used a spot meter, so I am not really familiar with it. If I were to use the spot meter in situation #1, will it have a lens on it with equivalant angle of view to match the lens I am using on my camera? If not ( and I am assuming that the spot meter has a standard angle lens or similar), won't there be an inaccurate reading due to the distance between the subject and the camera and all the light in between? How far away from the subject can a spot meter be used and still be able to get an accurate reading?

Roger Hicks · Jun 7, 2007

snegron said:
I have never used a spot meter, so I am not really familiar with it. If I were to use the spot meter in situation #1, will it have a lens on it with equivalant angle of view to match the lens I am using on my camera? If not ( and I am assuming that the spot meter has a standard angle lens or similar), won't there be an inaccurate reading due to the distance between the subject and the camera and all the light in between? How far away from the subject can a spot meter be used and still be able to get an accurate reading?

Most spot meters read a 1 degree spot, hence the name (the SEI photometer reads 1/2 degree or less). You key the exposure to the darkest area in which you want texture and detail (negative) or the brightest area you don't want to 'blow' to a featureless white (tranny/movie/Polaroid). You can also key to other tones such as an actor's skin-tone (why the SEI is still loved in Hollywood) or even a grey card, though there is rarely any reason to do the latter if you understand what you are doing.

Cheers,

Roger

Lee L · Jun 7, 2007

Just as a rough guideline for visually estimating one degree: the width of the end of your little finger viewed with your arm outstretched is roughly one degree. The moon and sun each subtend about 1/2 degree when viewed from earth.

Lee

percepts · Jun 7, 2007

snegron said:
I have never used a spot meter, so I am not really familiar with it. If I were to use the spot meter in situation #1, will it have a lens on it with equivalant angle of view to match the lens I am using on my camera? If not ( and I am assuming that the spot meter has a standard angle lens or similar), won't there be an inaccurate reading due to the distance between the subject and the camera and all the light in between? How far away from the subject can a spot meter be used and still be able to get an accurate reading?

Spot meters do what they are called. They meter a spot. Most of them only take the spot from a 1 deg angle so you can meter pretty much anything at any distance. Lens angle of view is irrelevant. Its the metered area angle of view which is important and that is quoted for the meter you use. The reading should be taken from the camera position. i.e. it meters light arriving at the lens.

Sounds simple but since the meter gives a reading which will place your subject on a middle value, you must know what value you want your metered area to be rendered as. e.g. A childs face on a middle value will look dark so you have to compensate. That compensation is a mnaual operation to be done in your head depending on the subject and your experience of where the brightness should be relative to the middle point. This is pretty simple to do once you have a little practice but it does have a learning curve.

With an incident meter, you just meter the light falling on the subject and the subject brightness ends up being whatever it is so in theory no adjustment required. However, in practice it doesn't always work like because some subjects may need placing on darker or lighter values than the meter might suggest, so again experience is required to know when this needs to be done.
So if you are going to have to make decisions about exposure adjustments regardless of which type you use then a spot meter is more versatile in that it can meter subjects in light in which an incident can't because the incident is not in the same light as the subject.

Roger Hicks · Jun 7, 2007

percepts said:
Sounds simple but since the meter gives a reading which will place your subject on a middle value...

Except that most spot meters have either highlight/shadow indices (use the former with tranny/movie/Polaroid, the latter with negative) or an I.R.E. scale (use 1 for shadow, 10 for highlight). The mid-tone index is substantially worthless and indeed was omitted on the S.E.I.

I fully second all your other comments, of course, especially the point about compensation on the base of experience.

Cheers,

Roger

Bob Carnie · Jun 7, 2007

I do not use any of the three meters, I use this rule for all situations, for colour and black and white. I havent run across a situation yet that this does not work with my own work.
With portable manual flash we would take a flash meter and read full output with 3/4 length image, head and shoulder image, and full length image. During the day we would just apply the settings we read earlier in the day . This really worked well for weddings.

David A. Goldfarb said:
In addition to what Nick says, you could use the sunny 16 rule instead of a meter in situations 2 and 3. Exposure will be 1/ISO sec. at f:16 in the sun, add three stops for shade.

David A. Goldfarb · Jun 7, 2007

Regarding the first example, I actually use spot metering for bird photography, but in-camera spot metering. Handheld spot metering for birds would occasionally be possible but would largely be impractical, just because you don't have enough time. You're also likely to be in the macro range if you're lucky, so TTL metering saves a calculation. My Canon New F-1 can read a 3% circle in the center of the field of view, so the angle depends on the lens (normally 400mm or 600mm).

I normally shoot color slide film. If it's a white bird, I might meter the white area and open up 1.5 stops from the meter reading. If it's a black bird, I might meter the black area and close down 2 stops. If it's a black and white bird, I'll usually meter for the white. If it's a colored or brown bird, I'll try to meter a patch that is close to the equivalent of middle grey.

percepts · Jun 7, 2007

Roger Hicks said:
Except that most spot meters have either highlight/shadow indices (use the former with tranny/movie/Polaroid, the latter with negative) or an I.R.E. scale (use 1 for shadow, 10 for highlight). The mid-tone index is substantially worthless and indeed was omitted on the S.E.I.

I fully second all your other comments, of course, especially the point about compensation on the base of experience.

Cheers,

Roger

depends on the specific meter. I use a minolta SPOT F which has highlight and shadow buttons. Since the meter doesn't know which film type I am using, it doesn't know how much to compensate for so the buttons are useless unless the compensation exactly fits the film. I have not bothered to work it out and always use the straight reading and base my compensation on that.

i.e. highlight/shadow compensation will be different for tranny than it will for B+W neg!

Michel Hardy-Vallée · Jun 7, 2007

snegron said:
I have never used a spot meter, so I am not really familiar with it. If I were to use the spot meter in situation #1, will it have a lens on it with equivalant angle of view to match the lens I am using on my camera? If not ( and I am assuming that the spot meter has a standard angle lens or similar), won't there be an inaccurate reading due to the distance between the subject and the camera and all the light in between? How far away from the subject can a spot meter be used and still be able to get an accurate reading?

A one degree angle of view is roughly equivalent to a 1000mm lens. The meter has a lens of a given focal (let's suppose it's 50mm for now) but its measuring area is only a tiny spot in the center of the field of view. So when you meter with it, you are seeing an entire image at 50mm, but you are measuring only a portion of it. This portion is what a 1000mm lens would see, and is small to your eyes, because a lot of the image is not used for metering.

Let's make another supposition: you are using a 1000mm lens with an in-camera meter that evaluates the entire field of view of the lens. You now have a spot meter equivalent to the one I described above, but the entire lens image is used for metering.

A final case: if you have an in-camera spot meter and a 1000mm lens, you may end up with a spot meter the equivalent of 2500mm (just another supposition, not a real number). That means you can do like David and meter the white patch on the wing of a bird.

As for your question on the difference between what you meter and the light in between: it doesn't matter. Your camera and your reflected light meter see the exact same light because they are at the same position.

juan · Jun 7, 2007

Using BTZS, I can use an incident meter in all three situations. I switched about a year ago after using a spot meter for nearly 20-years. Remember that the sun is 93-million miles from us (I'm not going to figure out how many kilometers that is), so a shadow over here is the same as one across the way. So is full sun.

As others have said, it takes experience to meter correctly, regardless of the kind of meter used.
juan

Daniel_OB · Jun 7, 2007

Spot meter always works the best. The problem with it is that photog have to know how to use it.

In some conditions 1 degree is not enough (for distant and small objects) so I use replacement object lighted in same way.

www.Leica-R.com

Allen Friday · Jun 7, 2007

In my photography, I use incident, spot and in-camera meters, depending on the subject I will be shooting, the camera I am using, whether I plan on using the ZS or BTZS, etc. But, I have never gone out into the field with all three meters. Each type of meter may be the “best” for certain situations , but if you plan your shots in advance, any type of meter will work in each of the situations you describe. The key is anticipation.

If you are entering the woods, take a reading in the sun before you go in, then meter a shadow in the woods. Unless the light is changing very rapidly, the readings should be good for hours. I will take the reading and then preset my camera to the one most likely to occur. If I come across the other lighting, I generally only have to open up or close down a few stops.

When I travel, particularly in the old section of European cities, I will meter the sunny side of the street and the shady side. I have both extremes covered, so I can adapt to the scene that presents itself quickly.

Metering is something that cm be done in advance of seeing the actual composition you want to photograph, regardless whether you have in-camera, spot or incident meters.

Roger Hicks · Jun 7, 2007

percepts said:
depends on the specific meter. I use a minolta SPOT F which has highlight and shadow buttons. Since the meter doesn't know which film type I am using, it doesn't know how much to compensate for so the buttons are useless unless the compensation exactly fits the film. I have not bothered to work it out and always use the straight reading and base my compensation on that.

i.e. highlight/shadow compensation will be different for tranny than it will for B+W neg!

Difference of interpretation here:

I'd say you use the highlight/shadow buttons and fine tune your exposure index until you can use them reliably...

Same result: different ways of achieving it. Obviously we each find our own way easier.

Cheers,

Roger

percepts · Jun 7, 2007

Roger Hicks said:
Difference of interpretation here:

I'd say you use the highlight/shadow buttons and fine tune your exposure index until you can use them reliably...

Same result: different ways of achieving it. Obviously we each find our own way easier.

Cheers,

Roger

Well yes we all have our own ways of working but with the minolta, you take a reading and press the shadow button and it adjusts the reading by 2.7 stops or if you press the highlight button it adjust the reading by 2.3 stops in the other direction. Methinks its set up for trannies and not negative film.

Roger Hicks · Jun 7, 2007

percepts said:
Methinks its set up for trannies and not negative film.

Funny, I find it easier with neg. Choose the darkest area in which you want texture and detail; use the shadow index. With the right EI, you'll get accurate exposures, reliably. We must still be misunderstanding one another. I had a meter like yours and liked it very much, but it broke, and as it belonged to Minolta, they took it back instead of fixing it...

Cheers,

Roger

pentaxuser · Jun 7, 2007

snegron. Roger Hicks has made a number of contributions here but modesty and the desire to avoid the impression of self interest may have prevented him from mentioning his Roger and Frances photography site where I found further useful info.

His and his wife's book "Perfect Exposure" also deserves a mention. I do warn you however that like all of his books you have to put up with a good deal of common sense and worse, a style of writing that is akin to plain conversation with the reader. He speaks to you rather than lectures to you.

If you can put up with that then the above book will address your thread's questions very comprehensively. The photos illustrating the points in the book aren't bad either.

pentaxuser

snegron · Jun 7, 2007

pentaxuser said:
snegron. Roger Hicks has made a number of contributions here but modesty and the desire to avoid the impression of self interest may have prevented him from mentioning his Roger and Frances photography site where I found further useful info.

His and his wife's book "Perfect Exposure" also deserves a mention. I do warn you however that like all of his books you have to put up with a good deal of common sense and worse, a style of writing that is akin to plain conversation with the reader. He speaks to you rather than lectures to you.

If you can put up with that then the above book will address your thread's questions very comprehensively. The photos illustrating the points in the book aren't bad either.

pentaxuser

Thanks for the tip! I was not aware of that particular title, however, I did learn quite a bit with another of his books, "Medium and large Format Photography". It actually motivated me to purchase a Mamiya RB67!

p.s. I have a metered prism for the RB67 but would like to get a handheld meter that would be versatile for field work, not to mention making my RB that much lighter with the waist level finder. Also, I could verify if my sunny 16 rule is accurate when using my meterless Nikon F. I don't mind risking several more rolls of 35mm film, but 120 is more expensive to develop in my area, so I'd like to make sure I have the correct exposure on every shot.

Chan Tran · Jun 7, 2007

I like the book "Perfect Exposure" too. Sorry Roger, I didn't buy it. I spent about 4 hours at the local Borders and read most of the book.

Ambient, Reflected, or Spot Meter?

snegron

Nick Zentena

David A. Goldfarb

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David H. Bebbington

snegron

Roger Hicks

Lee L

percepts

Roger Hicks

Bob Carnie

David A. Goldfarb

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percepts

Michel Hardy-Vallée

Membership Council

juan

Daniel_OB

Allen Friday

Roger Hicks

percepts

Roger Hicks

pentaxuser

snegron

Chan Tran

Ambient, Reflected, or Spot Meter?

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