Rob, you are talking incident light if I get your right. Incident light metering measure a certain amount of light (of illuminance) and give a certain amount of slide film exposure, function of film speed, which will render "correctly" a certain range of reflectivity, in the scene, function of the dynamic range of the slide film.
A reflected light exposure, on the other hand, measures a certain amount of light (of luminance) and gives you a certain amount of slide film exposure, function of film speed, which will render "correctly" only a certain, defined shade of grey of X reflectance in a detail of the film on the slide film, or, if you prefer, an exposure that will render in the slide film your subject of that X certain shade of grey, regardless of the tone of the subject.
When talking incident light metering you can abstract from shades of grey.
When talking reflected light metering you
cannot abstract from that X shade of grey for which they are calibrated.
I am interested in knowing theoretically which is the corresponding density of this X shade of grey on the slide film.
I have some problem with your explanation although now I begin seeing a "useable formula" which is nice
According to your formula, if I get it right:
Illuminance in cd/m
2 multiplied by ISO speed multiplied by 0.08 = EV exposure for given speed.
In your example, let's imagine and ambient light of 0.5 cd/m
2 at 100 ISO. Which actual exposure would that bring?
0.5 * 100 * 0.08 = 4
That does not seem to stick with your example which, using this formula, gives EV7 for a scene with an illuminance of 16 cd/m
2.
There shoud be a distance of 5 EV between a 16 cd/
m and a 0.5 cd/m
2.
Your formula doesn't seem to work for values of light below 1 cd/m
2.