Incident meter tips?

[trondsi]

I think Ben Horne is very good at what he does. His view of the incident meter might be simplistic of course, but he is good with his spot meter. I suspect that he hasn't really tried to make incident metering work after he fell in love with spot meters. That's fine of course, since it clearly works for him.

 

[wiltw]

Here is why Ben Horne is sounding off about incident metering and landscapes:

I just measured a typical scene with sunlit portions and shaded areas in the same scene.

• Measuring with incident meter at ISO 400 it measured 1/500 f/11 +0.8EV
• Measuring with a spot meter, dark soil in deep shade was -5.8EV, while a white bench in the sun was +2.6EV -- both relative to the incident meter's reading

So if I merely exposed per the incident meter reading, my shaded soil area would have been black and devoid of any detail in the photo. And although B&W film has a sufficiently wide DR to cope with 8.5EV wide scene (after all Zone System is across 10 zones) it would not have been exposed properly if simply following what the incident meter indicated.

 

[markbarendt]

Here is why Ben Horne is sounding off about incident metering and landscapes:

I just measured a typical scene with sunlit portions and shaded areas in the same scene.

• Measuring with incident meter at ISO 400 it measured 1/500 f/11 +0.8EV
• Measuring with a spot meter, dark soil in deep shade was -5.8EV, while a white bench in the sun was +2.6EV -- both relative to the incident meter's reading

So if I merely exposed per the incident meter reading, my shaded soil area would have been black and devoid of any detail in the photo. And although B&W film has a sufficiently wide DR to cope with 8.5EV wide scene (after all Zone System is across 10 zones) it would not have been exposed properly if simply following what the incident meter indicated.

wiltw the spot meter is a good tool, the only "problem' with an incident meter is that it is so darn good at providing a workable camera setting for normal work. People have learned to be able to use it directly and they like it.

That doesn't mean we can't use the incident meter creatively to get good readings.

The incident meter can be thought of as "protecting" the tones it's pointed at. (That is an imperfect sentence.) If you point the meter at the main light, the meter reading will protect the highlights. If you point the meter away from the lighting the reading will protect the shadows.

Once you have decided that the priority is protecting the shadows simply turn the meter 180 from the sun, use the lumidisk. Betcha get a reading that's very workable.

 

[wiltw]

wiltw the spot meter is a good tool, the only "problem' with an incident meter is that it is so darn good at providing a workable camera setting for normal work. People have learned to be able to use it directly and they like it.

That doesn't mean we can't use the incident meter creatively to get good readings.

The incident meter can be thought of as "protecting" the tones it's pointed at. (That is an imperfect sentence.) If you point the meter at the main light, the meter reading will protect the highlights. If you point the meter away from the lighting the reading will protect the shadows.

Once you have decided that the priority is protecting the shadows simply turn the meter 180 from the sun, use the lumidisk. Betcha get a reading that's very workable.

Hey, I am NOT saying the incident meter is not the tool to use, I have BOTH spot and incident and I recognize both the benefits and the limitations of EACH! Instead of merely condemning any thought that any meter other than an incident meter is wrong, I merely provided one example -- taken today! -- of the benefits of a spotmeter. Yes, the incident meter might have provided a fully usable exposure setting, but the spot meter would have permitted more shadow content. Nothing wrong with that.

Yes, if I had turned the incident meter 180 degrees, I would have gotten something close to the rule of thumb for the lighting derivatives of the basic Sunny 15...-5EV compared to in sun. So shadow detail could be expected to be about -2.5 to -3EV from there. So when the scene matches expectations, both incident and spotmeter result in same results. But if the shadow detail were even darker, the spot would detect that whereas with the incident we do not know the scene departs from our usual expectations.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Hey, I am NOT saying the incident meter is not the tool to use, I have BOTH spot and incident and I recognize the both the benefits and the limitations of EACH! Instead of merely condemning any thought that any meter other than an incident meter is wrong, I merely provided one example -- taken today! -- of the benefits of a spotmeter. Yes, the incident meter might have provided a fully usable exposure setting, but the spot meter would have permitted more shadow content. Nothing wrong with that.

+1

On post #13 I wrote:

Have both. The Gossen Luna Pro SBC is an incident meter and a reflectance meter. Furthermore a spot meter attachment is available. I have one and the spot meter attachment.

A meter that is a reflectance meter, a spot meter and an incident meter.

 

[John Koehrer]

Just like reflected light readings, incident readings can be interpreted.
With some experience "Kentucky windage" is used. If the scene has shadows where YOU
want a bit more detail, simply adjust for it in your mind. With reflected metering some
colors are can affect the reading. Recognizing that comes with experience.

If your exposures are a bit underexposed you can adjust the ISO to make a correction.
There's a thread around here about finding your own EI. Same thing, it can change with different films.

 

[Diapositivo]

Here is why Ben Horne is sounding off about incident metering and landscapes:

I just measured a typical scene with sunlit portions and shaded areas in the same scene.

• Measuring with incident meter at ISO 400 it measured 1/500 f/11 +0.8EV
• Measuring with a spot meter, dark soil in deep shade was -5.8EV, while a white bench in the sun was +2.6EV -- both relative to the incident meter's reading

So if I merely exposed per the incident meter reading, my shaded soil area would have been black and devoid of any detail in the photo. And although B&W film has a sufficiently wide DR to cope with 8.5EV wide scene (after all Zone System is across 10 zones) it would not have been exposed properly if simply following what the incident meter indicated.

An incident meter has no way of knowing the subject brightness range, the range of your film, what must be preserved, what can be sacrificed. An incident meter with a lumisphere gives you a good average of a subject with non-uniform illumination and that is going to work very well if the range is relatively limited.
If you have to think range boundaries, and you want to be sure what will retain details and what will not, you have no other route than the spot meter.
The spot meter is intrinsically more precise than incident metering because it does take into account each single tone and it tells you exactly where it will fall on the film. Single Incident metering with a lumisphere will never tell you that. Multiple incident metering and then averaging will always give you an average, you will not know where the boundaries of your scene range exactly fall on film.
Several readings with incident light meter and disc will tell you only about the contrast of illumination, but you will not know exactly the difference of reflectance of the parts of your subject, so, again, you will not know exactly where each part falls (and you will not know your subject brightness range).

Incident metering with lumisphere is fast and practical. When your subject is the face of a model, and the light source is on one side and another secondary light source is on the other side, the incident meter with a lumisphere will be very fast and very accurate.
For tricky situations only spot metering applies.
So it's not true that incident metering is not reliable. It's very reliable if you use it for the situations in which it is reliable!

IMHO.

 

[JOR]

As has been pointed out, a spotmeter yields interesting numbers - but which to choose? And how to get an incident-light reading of a mountain top from the valley below? Some bracketing will be required for a perfect slide. I would suggest setting an exposure for the sky and mountain-tops, rather than adjusting for the cloud-shaded foreground. A useful adjunct is the paper packed with the film (or printed on the inside of the carton). In the sixties, before I could afford a meter, I shot 25 asa Kodachrome (rather high contrast, therefore at risk of overexposure) at the recommended settings and got back a high proportion of well-exposed slides.