Incident vs Reflected light in sun

[foc]

Slide film and E-6 are sooooo easy because a) you see the positive, and b) there's just one possible development.
It's this simple: incident metering for direct sunlight. Your highlights will be perfect. Comment: you can open a third or half a stop if you want more open skin, as for fashion. You can close a third or half a stop if you have no skins and you want the highest color saturation.
For overcast or shadows (soft light) we don't reach clean whites after an incident reading: you"ll need a little more light.

That is exactly how my tutor taught me how to use an incident light meter, many years ago. And it never failed me in all the years since.

An unusual take on the "take a reading off of the palm of one's hand" approach.

 

[wiltw]

• ...when metering Reflected, the [sensor points toward the subject from camera position], to measure [light reflected back to the lens from the subject] (and whatever is in background behind thesubject)
• ...when metering Incident, you are [measuring light falling on the subject] as seen by the lens, so the incident white plastic dome is held at subject position so it aims [from subject position back toward the direction of the lens]

This is exactly what I said in post 42, and it is in agreement with the meter manufacturer user documentation provided, also replicated in poist 42.

and Incident readings have nothing to do with the type of Light Source, e.g. being 'specular' (sun) vs 'diffused' (overcast sky)

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Hi,
I did a lot of slide film. In third year slide film was used at my school to make students be sure about exposure, after two years of B&W negative film.
Slide film and E-6 are sooooo easy because a) you see the positive, and b) there's just one possible development.
It's this simple: incident metering for direct sunlight. Your highlights will be perfect. Comment: you can open a third or half a stop if you want more open skin, as for fashion. You can close a third or half a stop if you have no skins and you want the highest color saturation.
For overcast or shadows (soft light) we don't reach clean whites after an incident reading: you"ll need a little more light. Do a 7 frames strip (bracketing) in thirds, from 1 stop overexposure to 1 stop underexposure (under soft light) and the same under direct sunlight, both incident metering, and you'll see perfectly what you need to decide after your own meter reading.
B&W film is totally different. There are two fields: a) adjusting your scene contrast to a single sheet, and b) mixing scenes of wildly different contrast in a roll, so for mixed scenes we need a short development to be able to print sunny scenes without blocked highlights, and we just expand the contrast of soft scenes with higher contrast multigrade filters while printing. Both work. Of course in the mixed scenes case, the shadows of sunny scenes are a bit darker than if we do sun perfectly for a sheet.

Do your methods change when shooting during "magic hour"?

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

Do your methods change when shooting during "magic hour"?

Hi,
I don't do landscapes, and I don't use color anymore... IMO the thing about that time of the day is how quickly light changes.
Any metering is wrong the next minute...
If I were doing that, I would test extensively the same scene with 35mm film first: well, a roll would be enough, so not really extensively.
I would try to be able to relate exposure not only to the normal incident metering aiming at camera, but also aiming at the landscape: and I'd write down all both cases' data, bracketing in half stops, to see and learn... Once I did something like that, and I remember the key was doing that bracketing quickly: during the seconds after metering...
That gave me (slide film) a very good idea on how to expose without spot metering carefully several points of the scene...
It wasn't too complicated, but I was using 35mm film: I imagine with sheets it takes more time, but anyway, setting a system with 35mm first would be my way, or I'd be ruined.