Basic Metering

klownshed said:

But the meter I use the most outdoors is the "Pocket Light Meter" app on my iPhone as I always have it with me and it's not bulky like the Sekonic and usually has more battery left in it than the Digisix which for some reason doesn't have an OFF switch so always goes flat at the wrong time!

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Funny you should bring that up! Just yesterday morning my Digisix popped up the "Bat" flag just as I got started and for some reason, I was unable to locate my spare CR2032. Used the Pocket Light Meter app and got my images. I should make it a habit to remove the battery from that meter when not using it, but then if one is reasonably obsessive, it means resetting the time and ISO when you put the battery back in. (I wonder if the Mark II version is any less battery hungry?!)

I suppose some time I should do a relatively exhaustive comparison of the app and the meter, but so far, for B&W negatives, it seems close enough. One thing I like about some of those apps is you can log the reading and get a graphic with a thumbnail of the scene, the readings, and even the GPS coordinates (it's not an EXIF, but it can help! )

Helinophoto said:

The camera is like any other (*D*) camera in that the sensor has a IR-cut filter above it, filtering out any IR-light.
I just tested with my iPhone now and there was nothing coming out of the remote

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Thanks for the test result. This sounds a little strange to me though; every one of "those" cameras I've tried this, about a half-dozen, DO see the remote, to varying degrees degrees; the cheaper small-sensor cameras have been the worst. With my android phone in a dark room, remotes really light up. Perhaps IPhone has an exceptionally good IR-cut filter? In the US the tv remotes apparently operate on about 940 nm, I wonder if your country is the same. Can anyone in the US verify Helinophoto's result with iPhone? Thanks.

Both to Corey and the those who use the Digisix/Digiflash and have posted in this thread:
1) in general, keep a replacement battery with or near your battery powered meter; and
2) with respect to the Gossen Digisix/Digiflash, I've attached a small plastic re-closeable pouch to the inside of my Digiflash case and keep my replacement battery inside that. The pouch and extra battery offer the additional value of being rigid, and therefore help prevent me from accidentally pressing the button on the meter.

DWThomas said:

One thing I like about some of those apps is you can log the reading and get a graphic with a thumbnail of the scene, the readings, and even the GPS coordinates (it's not an EXIF, but it can help! )

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Absolutely. And as I mentioned above it's a good way to learn about exposures and metering with film as you get a photo showing an approximation of the exposure and the area you targeted for metering along with the exposure settings in your photo library on the iPhone. You have something tangible to compare.

You can also buy relatively inexpensive domes to turn the iPhone into an incident meter.

I have an app for my Samsung note3 that offers reflective and incident readings as well as spot-reflective readings and it's very accurate and compares to my digital Luna Star F meter almost exactly. I love it! Plus, it's with me almost 100% of the time. To be honest, I went through all that Zone System stuff and precise spot metering and all. Now I use incident readings 90-95% of the time. Corey, I realize you have no choice at the moment so do the best you can to try and understand how to read light bouncing back(reflective light) from your subject works and has to be read. Then you can do as you wish later.

Sekonic have some good articles on metering on their website.

Corey Fehr said:

With all due respect, I'm asking because I genuinely want to understand the principles, even if I don't put them to use right away.

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Corey,

If you are using an in-camera reflected meter, then you need to read up on how this is a "GRAY METER" and always wants to average a scene out to middle gray. So if you photograph a white horse on a white wall and a black horse on a black wall, auto exposure will average them both out to look very gray. Learn this concept, then learn how to use EXPOSURE COMPENSATION on your camera to adjust your exposures.

If you are using an incident meter (with film, hopefully!) you need to meter the scene with the dome pointing directly towards the camera. This works reasonably well for most scenes where the light is not excessively harsh, say very early morning or late evening, the golden hours. For more complicated lighting scenarios you can meter the shadows and the highlights separately and make some calculations, but this gets complicated fairly quickly.

Corey Fehr said:

I'm just going to buy a good starter meter. Any suggestions for a beginner meter?

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The Sekonic Flashmate was my first meter. Still in use after 10+ years.

Dead Link Removed

I own one of the Gossen Digisix/Digiflash meters. Not a huge fan of the price for what it is, but I do like the general shape and style of it. Fits nicely into the hand or pocket without much thought. Would love for a little switch to power on/off when not in use, but it hasn't ate too many batteries over the few years I've had it. The UI, for what it is, could be vastly improved for switching between modes and 'going back'. Not 100% which Digiflash model I have, but mine works under the assumption that you only move forward through things. Kind of annoying to set your ISO and overshoot by one, but given how rarely I need to set that I don't let it bother me. (Plus it is easy enough to manually add/subtract stops if needed)


One of the best things that I like about it is the dial rule built into it, and will often just use that part of it rather than the actual meter of it in some cases as a quick reference reminder. I know what the light levels are for a sunny-16 exposure, but I still find it easier and less error prone to set the dial and work off my Shutter Speed/Aperture combinations from that. (You could make one out of paper that did the exact same thing and cost a fraction of it, but that would lack the durability and flexibility unless you wanted to put the time and effort into building something better than printed paper.)

Corey Fehr said:

I'm just going to buy a good starter meter. Any suggestions for a beginner meter?

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Apart form the mentioned Flashmate (very good), a used Minolta Autometer IV would be very good incident meter too. Gossen Digisix is good too and it's small. Personally, I am fan of the Voigtländer VC Meter II, but that's only because it's very tiny. Whichever meter you get, I hardly think you could go wrong with a halfway modern meter (80ties onwards) from the well known brands like Seconic, Gossen, Pentax, Minolta...

BTW. I found it helpful and interesting to experiment with a 1 degree spotmeter for a while. It's a great educational tool to learn about contrast. Just measure different objects in a scene and see how their luminosity relates to each other.

Cheers
~andi

Corey Fehr said:

I still need to know what to meter...

For example. You have a brightly lit, let's say, playground. Very few shadows. Where do you place the meter or select what to meter, and why?

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I learned to do this by practicing with a standard scene. A standard scene is a front-lit outdoor subject under a clear or mostly clear sky between 10am and 3pm with a variety of things in it: buildings, grass, trees, roadway, concrete, white paint, deep shadows, open shadows, and so on.

For my use of black and white film I've found by repeated testing that the correct exposure for all standard scenes is always the same. And it's half the film ISO value expressed as a shutter speed at f16. For example with Ilford FP4+, ISO 125, all standard scenes get 1/60 @ f16.

Because I know the correct exposure before I get the light-meter out I can use the standard scene to interpret meter readings of things. If grass reads a half a stop less I know to give an extra half a stop when reading grass. If weathered wood reads right I can use the numbers without change. If white paint reads 3 stops less I'll know to give three stops more when basing exposure on white paint in a scene. An open shadow lit by lots of sky might read a stop more so I know to give a stop less if basing my exposure on that shadow area. And so on...

None of this requires exposing film. By taking notes of individual meter readings and comparing with a known overall correct exposure it is possible to build a reliable mental encyclopedia of objects in the real world: what's inherently dark, what's mid-tone, what's lighter than average. With that knowledge it's easy in future to interpret meter readings as a guide to correct exposure.

All good stuff here. One point to add to the story is to keep in mind how your film reacts to under/overexposure, and use this when metering.

A negative film (color or B&W) will react well to overexposure, and also has more dynamic range. This means that both brightly and dimly lit areas of your picture will be visible on the film.
You can make a spot measurement on a bright and a dark area, average both, and the picture will most probably be OK.
Or use an average measurement of the scene with a simple, cheap, inaccurate meter, the picture will probably also be OK.

Slide film is almost intolerant to over/underexposure. The best way for reflected metering is to use a spot meter and chose the part of the picture you want properly exposed. (typically your subject). Dark areas as well as bright areas will lose information and turn to black or white. This is particularly true with high-contrast film such as Velvia.

It might be valuable at some point in your photographic career to pick a film (such as Velvia) and thoroughly learn how it reacts. This process can take years.
Negative films, in particular B&W, are not as picky but it might well be worth the effort, technically as well as aesthetically.

Hope this helps

Also, as a side note, no disrespect meant to anyone, but I think it is bad pedagogic practice to answer a question with "you can bother about that later". Corey wants to know and came here with specific questions. The least we can do, and the purpose of this forum, is that knowledgeable people step in and provide answers to the best of their abilities. And this regardless of "where" she is in her photographic career. If we don't do that, she (and many others) will never have a chance to progress. Technique does not compensate for bad photographic vision, but the opposite is also true. My 2 cents

BrianShaw said:

Meter a highlight, and meter a shadow. Split the difference. That's the easiest way to get started.

Or pick a middle tone and measure that.

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And for me, for black and white (which is all I shoot in film), the "middle tone" is a fresh-cut lawn in bright sunlight. Works for me and has for years. Why? I think because the cut grass has both highlights and shadows in the same reading. This may not be scientific but as I said, it has worked for me for years, like maybe sixty or more ...........Regards!

Helinophoto said:

The camera is like any other (*D*) camera in that the sensor has a IR-cut filter above it, filtering out any IR-light.
I just tested with my iPhone now and there was nothing coming out of the remote

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I've been looking through some internet reports; allegedly the IPhone "selfie" camera DOES "see" an IR remote control, but the standard camera does NOT. So it seems that the IPhone has a well-behaved IR-cut filter in the standard camera, and my reservations about it as a meter are unfounded.

But... other smartphone meters might have an issue, so it doesn't hurt to be aware of this possibility. As a note, I handled the IR cut filter selection on an early "that other kind of camera," so I have some familiarity, and know that it is not cut-and-dried exactly what cut-off to use.

Corey, you've already gotten a lot of really good, informative answers to most of your questions and I don't want to clutter the thread by repeating what others have already explained eloquently.

I'll just add a couple of things: don't sell your smartphone meter short. They're actually pretty darned accurate - much more than I expected - and even the paid versions are only a few dollars compared to handheld meters for $100 or so. I've tried three phone apps (Pocket Light Meter, MyLightMeter and FotometerV2) and all of them are well within a stop of my handhelds. They work. Well. Why carry extra stuff?

You asked what the differences were between incident, spot and reflective meters were and never really got a complete answer.

Reflective meters read the light that is reflected off your subject. Different reflective meters are "weighted" in different ways: some measure the average light of the whole scene while others are "center weighted" and measure more of the center area. As you use your meter more, you'll start to get a sense of how it "sees" light. It just takes a little practice.

Spot meters are just specialized reflective meters that can measure a very small, selective part of the scene from a reasonable distance. They tend to be expensive and they're an extra thing to carry, but for super-accuracy they're the bomb. Generally, they're slow to use so you're not likely to see street photographers or photojournalists using them. They're more for carefully set up shots.

Incident meters don't measure the light reflected off the subject but, rather, measure the light that is falling on the subject; The actual light source. That is why it's best to place the meter AT the subject and face the camera position as that will measure the light on the subject from that angle. Sometimes you can't get near the subject and must, instead, measure something nearer to you that is similarly lit. Incident meters are very popular with studio photographers who can stand right at the subject to meter.

Your iPhone meter is a basic reflective meter, and a reasonably accurate one. There's no need, at least for now, to buy a separate handheld meter.

Others here have already given great advice on the use of this type of meter, so I'll leave you to it.

Have fun!

Corey Fehr said:

I believe it is spot metering.

I'm attaching a photo for clarity or for correction.

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Testing the free version of the app against my Sekonic Flashmate they are within 1/3 stop of each other. Some of the readings are exactly the same.

As to spot metering, you are better off reading a larger area than a very tiny one. A large section of bark on a tree will average out to a better shadow area than a 1" section. The app seems like it is useful only for reading fairly close reflected readings.

I may try out the Pro Version, if only to have it for a backup in case both my incident meters fail!

ParkerSmithPhoto said:

The app seems like it is useful only for reading fairly close reflected readings.

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IME it's only slightly center-weighted. It gives me pretty similar readings to my averaging SLR TTL meters. Pretty far from a spot meter, actually. Even zooming in doesn't quite get into spot meter territory, but that's just my impression.

This is all fantastic information. I'm going to master some basics first, but I like the idea of being able to utilize more difficult concepts when the time comes.
I've accepted I have the rest of my life to learn photography and don't need to cram it into one class. *Deep breath*

Good attitude. Now meter and expose some film!

Corey Fehr said:

I'm having the same issue.

I was photographing something today and had some weirdos watching me in a secluded area, was sort of creepy.

I wanted to meter it as quickly as possible, and all of a sudden got bombarded with "pro" upgrades and such.

I'm just going to buy a good starter meter. Any suggestions for a beginner meter?

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I go to a school and a few people picked up these ones cheap second hand. Sekonic L-308S-U Flashmate Light Meter. Great meter that also meters flash.

I myself have some old gossen meters that Ive had for about 10 years now. One that is for studio use (measures flash) and the other just measures incident and reflected light.

corey
you might also look at the sekonic studio delux meters
they sell for anywhere from 25-75$ and seem to last forever
i've had one i bought new in the 1980s and i use it as my main meter.
they come with a case, sphere ( ambient ) disk ( reflective) and grid ( contrast )
and some are sold with an accessory "slide set" for direct reading ..

There is very little to beat the good old failsafe greycard. If you don't want to carry something else as well as the meter then the Incident light attachment or similar as used on many meters as an alternative. When I don't use my all singing and dancing F6 with it's almost failsafe inbuilt meter, I use a Weston Euromaster with the Invercone.

Using my personal experience, judging from the reading, I can visualise what I want as fairly dense shadow or almost (I did say almost) burnt out highlights, and set the exposure to be under or over exposed, or just leave it as the meter suggests. It is VERY rare that I even get an unprintable negative, either B&W or Colour. (I actually have more trouble with camera shake!!!)

BMbikerider said:

There is very little to beat the good old failsafe greycard.

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IDK BMbikerider
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)
17 pages of instructions doesnt' seem simple to me

your best investment is to read a book: basic photography. Editorial control usually cut some crap out of the written.