Basic Metering

[Sirius Glass]

Got it. That makes sense.

What kind of metering is the "MyLightMeter" app considered?

I'd consider it general coverage. General coverage is 30 degree angle of view. The app may be less than that; I can't recall. I took it off my phone when it started pestering me for money. Spot is generally 1 or 5 degree angle of coverage... looking at a very small part of the scene.

What Brian said is correct.

 

[Corey Fehr]

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?

 

[MattKing]

Got it. That makes sense.

What kind of metering is the "MyLightMeter" app considered?

The software appears to be quite flexible. It offers both incident reading, and reflective reading capabilities, along with a "spot" function.
The problem with evaluating it is that the software, the hardware and the operating system interact, and that the hardware and the operating system are designed to be both multi-purpose and easily "upgraded".
Most of us prefer meters that are either not subject to being "upgraded" or are only "upgraded" for purposes relating to light metering.
Most of the people who I know who use and are happy with smart phone meters have single purpose photography meters to check them against.

 

[markbarendt]

Pardon my ignorance, but what's the difference? I know there's reflective and incident metering, but wouldn't you have to adjust it either way? And still select *something* to meter?

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

 

[BrianShaw]

You might be looking at the PRO version, Matt. The free version is quite basic. Very useful, though.

 

[Bill Burk]

This is great.
It reminds me of using fingers and arms to measure proportion in drawing.
"Use your body".

It's a very good idea to use the palm of your hand as "one of the things" you meter.

The rule of thumb is to "open up one stop" from that reading.

Very often this will give you the same result as an incident meter. It will also give you a sanity check of your calculations whenever you try metering other things.

I am never bothered when meter readings differ by one stop, I just figure the two different readings are just different "right" answers.

 

[Corey Fehr]

It's a very good idea to use the palm of your hand as "one of the things" you meter.

The rule of thumb is to "open up one stop" from that reading.

Very often this will give you the same result as an incident meter. It will also give you a sanity check of your calculations whenever you try metering other things.

I am never bothered when meter readings differ by one stop, I just figure the two different readings are just different "right" answers.

Is this the same principle as using a gray card, but neater?

 

[Sirius Glass]

One can forget to take a gray card, but generally I found that I have not forgotten to take my hands with me.

As far as a spot meter goes, if you have a behind the lens meter in your 35mm camera, you can put on a telephoto or zoom telephoto lens and use it as a spot meter and then after you have the exposure, use that exposure with another lens.

 

[Corey Fehr]

One can forget to take a gray card, but generally I found that I have not forgotten to take my hands with me.

As far as a spot meter goes, if you have a behind the lens meter in your 35mm camera, you can put on a telephoto or zoom telephoto lens and use it as a spot meter and then after you have the exposure, use that exposure with another lens.

Great tip!

 

[Bill Burk]

Is this the same principle as using a gray card, but neater?

Basically the same principle. There are people who will tell tall tales about gray cards (myself included). Try not to get caught up in that.

Your hand has a couple advantages over the gray card. It's a 3-dimensional object while the gray card is 2-dimensional. As Sirius Glass points out, you always have it with you.

 

[Sirius Glass]

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?

For about $100 you can get a Gossen Luna Pro from Dead Link Removed. That would give you a reflectance meter which can be used for the Zone System, correct for filter factors and be used as incident meter. Later you could buy a spot meter attachment. Overkill for a beginner, but I would be the only meter you will need to buy and it would allow you to use yours instructor's guidance in using the Zone System.

 

[Corey Fehr]

For about $100 you can get a Gossen Luna Pro from Dead Link Removed. That would give you a reflectance meter which can be used for the Zone System, correct for filter factors and be used as incident meter. Later you could buy a spot meter attachment. Overkill for a beginner, but I would be the only meter you will need to buy and it would allow you to use yours instructor's guidance in using the Zone System.

Perfect. Thanks.

 

[MattKing]

A Luna-Pro SBC (Profisix outside the USA) is a really good choice, due to the fact that it uses a readily available 9 volt battery.
It is fairly large though.
A Luna-Pro F offers flash metering as well, at the expense of some of the SBC's exceptional low light capabilities.
For current offerings, I like the Sekonic 308 series.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

The hand trick is a good one. When shadow areas are too small to read I've placed my hand close to the ground and read off of its shadow. AND...I've also held my hand up to the heavens and read the backside of my hand.

 

[chuck94022]

Corey, here are some basic things to think about. They are confusing at first, but when you think about it, and practice, it will make sense:

Below I'm only talking about reflective meters, which is what you have.

1. Meters are color blind. They only see light intensity (from black through grays to pure white).
2. A meter will tell you the exposure you need to make what you are pointing it at the middle of that range, or gray. To be precise, they call this 18% gray, but just think "middle gray".
3. If you point your meter at a snowy white scene, it will give you an exposure reading. If you use that reading, the snowy white scene will be too dark. It will look middle gray on your film, because the meter told you the exposure to use to make gray from that light. So you need to give the film more light than the meter told you: either open up the aperture or slow down the shutter speed. Try two stops. Either gives more light. Make sense?
4. If you point the meter at a dark scene (mostly shadows), the meter will give you an eposure reading. If you use that reading, the dark scene will be too bright! It too will look gray on your film. If you want the shadows to look like shadows, you have to give the film less light - close the aperture some (1 or two stops), or speed up your shutter speed.
5. If you point your meter at a scene with a random mix of shadows and lighted parts, it will probably give you an exposure reading that is good enough. You don't have to do anything.
6. If the scene has the sun behind it, so your meter is pointing at the sun, it will probably have a wrong reading for the scene. The stuff you care about will be too dark. So open the aperture or slow down the shutter. (Even better, that is the time to bring out a flash. But you're already confused enough, leave the flash for later.)

You don't have an incident meter or spot meter, so don't get confused about that yet.

Here's the good news: film is very forgiving. You can be off by a stop or two and still be able to get an image. Have fun, and relax!

 

[Helinophoto]

Is the app you use wysiwyg? (WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet)

I often use the "light meter" app on my iPhone, but I never use it for spotting etc, I use it when I am lazy and just want to get a wysiwyg-view and some values, works well enough.

What I get from metering, if you are not Ansel Adams, is that a scene is measured by a spot meter (or close to), to get the contrast range of a scene.
That is, you measure the darkest of the dark and the lightest of the light, to see how many stops are between.

I suppose one can then decide wether some tones will be outside the dynamic-range of the film, or if one is to prioritize something, over something else. (keep highlights and let shadows be black), or how to process the film thereafter. (zone-mucking about).

That is one way I guess, but unless you shoot slides, or want to AA-like control, and if you use roll-film in various light, that method is pretty moot (unless you do the same placing for all your shots, since it influence development).

Another way, is to spot-meter the important thing in your shot and decide which exposure (which zone) to place it in.
I often do portraits, and I normally put Caucasian skin at +1 stop from middle gray (zone 6) as a start, sometimes even higher.
I sometimes also try to meter highlights (like back-lit sun shining off hair and skin), to see how much range that is.
If I have a camera that has spot-metering, I will use that and simply adjust my exposure to the needle in the viewfinder.

Landscapes can be difficult, since the sky is almost always brighter than the ground, in those occasions, I may spot-meter the sky and the (important parts of the) ground, to see how many stops difference there is and how many graduated nd filters i need, to get the sky-exposure within reasonable exposure-values, compared to the ground.

Incident-metering for a (landscape) scene, where the sun is in your frame, will cause overexposure (typicaly sunsets), in those scenes, a wysiwyg-app or a reflected spot-meter (or in-camera spot) will be a better option.

I have one of these: http://www.ebay.com/bhp/pentax-digital-spot-meter it can store several readings, and help with the final exposure.

If you have a rich uncle, you can try and get hold of a Seconic L-758, it's a meter that will cover everything you do, from studio to landscape and everything in-between, for years. It has a proper spot-meter as well.

The basics of metering, can be seen on youtube as well, there are tons of videos covering this, with practical examples, as well as studio-flash metering. ^^

Like this, think of *D* as slides, other than that, it's pretty universial:

 

[mynewcolour]

Does your college not loan meters?

Most here in the UK have a bunch of Sekonic L308s for use. These are basic (but will meter for flash).

 

[Mr Bill]

There is one thing I would be suspicious of with an IPhone-based meter - sensitivity to IR (infrared light). Let me start out with an example. Many TV remote controls use IR. Note that photo film are not generally sensitive to IR (if they are, they will be advertised as Infrared film).

Now here is a test: using your IPhone in video mode, "look" at the front of a tv remote while pressing buttons. (My guess is that the IPhone will "see" a flashing light which neither your eye nor the film can see.) So here is the question, how accurate can the IPhone meter be when IR is messing with it?

My guess is that, if the IPhone meter is accurate using daylight, it will overestimate (meaning to underexpose film ) under "tungsten" light. ("Tungsten" is filament; it's the sort of bulb that gets too hot to touch.) But offhand I don't have any idea how much error; it might be insignificant, or maybe not. This is something I would personally check before relying on the IPhone meter. If you want to "stir the pot," you might want to raise the question to your instructor (I'm presuming they recommended the meter app?).

I can elaborate a lot more if you want on what is going on, but here's how I'd personally test it. You DO need a known-good exposure meter. Use a reference card, like a gray card or even just some white mounting board (you don't want it to be shiny, as specular reflections may cause reading problems). Take readings of the card outdoors with both meters. Now go indoors and repeat the test using an old-time standard bulb, perhaps a 60 or 75 watt unit. Per the ISO standard for exposure meters, they should give a good reading under tungsten, (within 1/3 stop or so from memory), so any large difference in the tungsten readings are probably the fault of the IPhone.

Anyway, this is something I would personally check before putting trust in the IPhone.

 

[Craig75]

Got it. That makes sense.

What kind of metering is the "MyLightMeter" app considered?

I dont know if free version allows it but i bought the app (its just a few dollars) and you can zoom in to meter a smaller section of the scene using the little tab sticking out of bottom of lightmeter graphic.

The quickest way to get the basics of metering nailed down is to use a meter and a digutal camera that allows you to shoot in manual mode. Ie you choose shutter and aperture and you can see whats happening immediately.

 

[klownshed]

I have two dedicated light meters. A Sekonic L-398A and a Gossen Digisix. They both have reflected and incident modes. The Digisix is small and the incident dome is easily slid out of the light path to use in reflected mode so it's quite handy to use.

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!

An advantage of an iPhone app meter is that you can move around the target on the screen and see the resultant EV rating change in real time (and the display will approximate the resulting exposure pretty well). You can log the reading and compare it with your resultant exposure. It saves a log in the photo library with the exposure info, target position and photo. It's a great way to store your exposure information for each frame.

It's more than accurate enough and is better than an old meter with tired cells. I've never run into a situation in which the iPhone didn't do a sterling job as a light meter. It's easily as accurate as either of my dedicated meters.

There's a big difference between metering indoors and outdoors. Indoors is pretty easy, there are fewer variables and it's easy to learn from your results as everything is more repeatable as the light sources are generally easier to control.

Outdoors, an easy way to meter a landscape scene with a reflected meter is to just point it in the centre of the frame you'll be photographing. Looking at the image within that frame you then decide if the overall scene is brighter or darker than an average scene and you adjust the exposure settings accordingly. The average reading would be similar to metering a grey card in the same light. That also ends up with a meter reading similar to the one you'd get with an SLR with centre weighted TTL metering. It's simple and relies on you understanding what that average reading looks like so it's good practice. It's kind of a manual version of matrix metering. You judge what you see in the viewfinder and make a decision based on that.

For example, the oft repeated black cat in front of a black wall. Point the reflected meter in the centre of that scene and the meter reading will result in an over-exposed photo, with the black cat and wall becoming grey. You therefore need to adjust the exposure settings accordingly to make the grey cat black again. Similarly for a snowy scene you will get an under exposure so you need to adjust for that. Once you know how much you need to adjust for black and for white, it becomes easier to interpolate that to adjust for any scene. By bracketing your guesses you will quickly get a feel for the light in a scene and the effect your adjustment guesses have.

By pointing it in the centre of the scene it's relatively repeatable and cuts down the variables. It shouldn't take too long to get a good feel for that and once you understand whether a scene is brighter or darker than average you can explore different methods of metering if necessary.

And don't get too worried about accuracy. Photography is a pretty imprecise craft. The same settings will result in slightly different exposures with different cameras. Every setting has a tolerance, which are bigger on some cameras/lenses than others. But it's usually close enough for rock and roll.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Super simple question with many different scenarios:

How do you choose what to meter?

We didn't get into this much in class, we simply did one assignment where we metered shadows, and then adjusted the exposure for middle gray.
Simple enough.
But obviously, I'm not always going to meter the shadow.

Do you then pick the darkest thing in the photo you want to have detail? (In harmony with "metering with the shadows"), or simply pick whatever you want with details?

I do the former and sometimes the latter.all depends on your creative visualization.It's the artist's decision. Can't learn that in class.

 

[Corey Fehr]

Corey, here are some basic things to think about. They are confusing at first, but when you think about it, and practice, it will make sense:

Below I'm only talking about reflective meters, which is what you have.

1. Meters are color blind. They only see light intensity (from black through grays to pure white).
2. A meter will tell you the exposure you need to make what you are pointing it at the middle of that range, or gray. To be precise, they call this 18% gray, but just think "middle gray".
3. If you point your meter at a snowy white scene, it will give you an exposure reading. If you use that reading, the snowy white scene will be too dark. It will look middle gray on your film, because the meter told you the exposure to use to make gray from that light. So you need to give the film more light than the meter told you: either open up the aperture or slow down the shutter speed. Try two stops. Either gives more light. Make sense?
4. If you point the meter at a dark scene (mostly shadows), the meter will give you an eposure reading. If you use that reading, the dark scene will be too bright! It too will look gray on your film. If you want the shadows to look like shadows, you have to give the film less light - close the aperture some (1 or two stops), or speed up your shutter speed.
5. If you point your meter at a scene with a random mix of shadows and lighted parts, it will probably give you an exposure reading that is good enough. You don't have to do anything.
6. If the scene has the sun behind it, so your meter is pointing at the sun, it will probably have a wrong reading for the scene. The stuff you care about will be too dark. So open the aperture or slow down the shutter. (Even better, that is the time to bring out a flash. But you're already confused enough, leave the flash for later.)

You don't have an incident meter or spot meter, so don't get confused about that yet.

Here's the good news: film is very forgiving. You can be off by a stop or two and still be able to get an image. Have fun, and relax!

Thanks!

 

[removed account4]

corey

one way to think about the difference between reflective and incident metering is refletive meter will give you a DETAIL, and a incident will give you a GENERAL idea
even though its a page advertisting their meters this is a good write up about the difference between reflective and ambient metering

http://www.sekonic.com/l-478/incident-vs-reflected.html

 

[Rick Jones]

Corey that's a great question but not necessarily a simple one. The short answer is it depends on the scene. With a reflected meter keep in mind if you accept the indicated exposure of any object metered close up that object will print as middle grey. With that in mind not every scene will have an important shadow as say a clothes line hung with white sheets. Do you want the sheets to print as middle grey - expose for the indicated reading. If you want white sheets in your print you will have to adjust the exposure by adding as much as 2 or 3 stops of exposure. If you are photographing a pile of coal that close up reading will give you grey coal so you will need to reduce the indicted exposure by 1 or 2 stops to get black coal in your print. In choosing what to meter ask what in the scene is most important. A friends face, sheets on a clothes line or a pile of coal? What makes it not so simple is you have to calibrate your system which might require an adjusted film speed (EI) that will allow your shadows to print as you intend when you choose to base your exposure on them. You also have to pin down your normal development time to assure those white sheets print as you visualized them. Occasionally you can get away with an average reading of the entire scene hoping all will average out to middle grey and that is basically what an incident meter does. I have always felt more comfortable pinning down a small area in the scene and placing that value on the grey scale with my exposure. Told you your question was not necessarily a simple one!

 

[Helinophoto]

There is one thing I would be suspicious of with an IPhone-based meter - sensitivity to IR (infrared light). Let me start out with an example. Many TV remote controls use IR. Note that photo film are not generally sensitive to IR (if they are, they will be advertised as Infrared film).

Now here is a test: using your IPhone in video mode, "look" at the front of a tv remote while pressing buttons. (My guess is that the IPhone will "see" a flashing light which neither your eye nor the film can see.) So here is the question, how accurate can the IPhone meter be when IR is messing with it?

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

It makes sense too, as the photo's would look very weird (interesting actually, since I already have a DSLR with no IR-cut filter that I use for IR-photography).