Light Meter For Landscapes?

Backwards first.

If you use a spot meter to meter something at 10 feet, you would not get the same reading as something 1000 feet away. At ten feet you can meter part of a subject. At 1000 feet you can meter part of a mountain but not one part of a tree. As you progress in distance your field of view for that 1 degree has more in it. You also have an issue with the air and it's light filtering effects. DIfferent areas have different conditions. But I would hazzard a guess that, even here in the desert Southwest, you would see less light being reflected at that greater distance. I may be completely wrong on this.

The Scenario you mentioned gave a three stop difference, and you are using portra VC which is negative film, so you are going to be well within the limits of the film. I would over expose by one stop to get more shadow detail and punch the colors. This three stop difference is what i usually deal with. I would use an incident meter. Step out in front of the camera aim the bulb at the lens and use that for the exposure, as long as you are not casting a shadow on the meter. If I were using transparency film I would meter the bright spot and then underexpose a tad to punch the colors, because this scene is within the limits of transparency film.

Robert:
Why would you use a split ND filter in a scene of such small difference between highs and lows?

mark said:

Robert:
Why would you use a split ND filter in a scene of such small difference between highs and lows?

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Primarily because of the small latitude provided by a film like Fuji Velvia; I'm not unique in this respect. Check out the work of Joe Cornish, you will find that he uses split neutral density filters for differences as small as a half stop.

Thanks again for all the feedback! I am now leaning more toward a light meter that includes both incident and spot metering functions. I think I would like to try both methods and see what results I would get. I guess the confusion would come if both methods show very different exposures.

They may very well show VERY different exposures, and most of the time.

Robert. Maybe i should try this. I have ordered two boxes of Velvia 50 for this falll shooting season and you know the film a hell of a lot better than I. I usually use Provia but this summer the greens were not doing it for me. Just not giving me what i wanted, hence the velvia 50 purchase, and, next payday, a box of the 100.

any meter can only give a suggested exposure setting, you've got to think about what it is really telling you

snegron said:

Let's say I am using Porta VC, ISO 160 film outside and I want to photograph a tree and the surrounding landscape. The tree will be on the left of my frame and the rest of the scene will be on the right. There is more light on the right side of the frame, the tree has more shadows. I want to have as much detail from the tree as well as the background. It is late afternoon/early evening and my "tree" reading indicates 125 sec at F5.6, but my background reading indicates 125 sec at F16. Now what? Do I average it all out to 125 at F8, maybe F11? Will a spot meter give me the readings of the tree and the background and then I have to do the math and come up with the average reading on my own??

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You need to learn to think in f-stops. In the scene you have just described, you have metered a 3 stop range. That is, the background is 3 stops brighter than the tree. Using the Zone system, you determine where you want to place the tones of each area in the tonal range. If you place your background on Zone VIII, your tree will fall on Zone V. If you place your background on Zone VII, your tree will fall on Zone IV, which sounds more likely. You will set your camera for Zone V, which in this case would be 1/125 @ f8. Your tree will fall one stop darker than medium gray, and your background will fall two stops lighter.
This is not necessarily the "CORRECT" exposure! Exposure is subjective, not objective, and you set the exposure to render the effect that you as the photographer wish to create in the final photo.
Caveat: I'm sure the full scene had more than a 3-stop range, unless maybe you were shooting in fog. A normal full daylight scene usually has about a 5-7 stop range. So there were probably darker areas than your tree in the scene, and possibly lighter areas than the background you measured. A spot meter will allow you to measure all those areas and place them as you wish on the Zonal scale. It gives you complete control over exposure.
Hope this helps.

snegron said:

My objective is that I am trying to get a meter reading without walking away from the camera. If I am 25 feet away or more from the subject and I can't walk up to the subject to get a reading, which meter can I use, reflective, incident, or spot?

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OK, first of all, you do not have to walk up to the subject to take an incident reading. If I am standing two feet in front of you and you reach out and take an incident reading in front of my face and then take another reading with the meter close to you (but with the dome pointed in the same direction), you will get the same reading. So if I am across the street from you, and there are no shadows falling on me that do not fall on you -that is, we are in the same light- you can take an incident meter reading right where you stand. This applies whatever the distance; as long as the subject is illuminated by the same light as you are, you can take the reading right where you stand, as long as you point the dome in the same direction.
PS: This is why the "sunny 16" rule also applies on the moon. It is relatively the same distance from the light source (the sun) as the earth is.

eddym said:

. . . PS: This is why the "sunny 16" rule also applies on the moon. It is relatively the same distance from the light source (the sun) as the earth is.

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Since the moon averages a fairly dark grey, the sunny 16 rule will expose it as such. However, we perceive the moon as quite bright. For it to appear in a photograph as we expect it to, use the looney 11 or perhaps better yet, the looney 8 rule. This topic is debated as hotly as the incident, reflected or spot meter issue.

mark said:

Robert. Maybe i should try this. I have ordered two boxes of Velvia 50 for this falll shooting season and you know the film a hell of a lot better than I. I usually use Provia but this summer the greens were not doing it for me. Just not giving me what i wanted, hence the velvia 50 purchase, and, next payday, a box of the 100.

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Provia is a great film, but probably won't give you what you are looking for. Velvia 50 is better choice. Try doing your fall color work with a warm polarizing filter (or polarizer and 81B) - I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the richness of the greens. Since, you are shooting LF, try one with the warm polarizer and one without as well.

I love Provia, it has never let me down. Just, this summer I wanted more from my greens, as I was shooting well within old aspen groves and the greens did not match my vision. I needed the Velvia greens. So, since I am going back to the those aspen groves this fall I want options, so I am going with provia AND Velvia.

Jim Jones said:

Since the moon averages a fairly dark grey, the sunny 16 rule will expose it as such. However, we perceive the moon as quite bright. For it to appear in a photograph as we expect it to, use the looney 11 or perhaps better yet, the looney 8 rule. This topic is debated as hotly as the incident, reflected or spot meter issue.

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Note I said "on the moon," not "of the moon." In other words, an astronaut standing on the moon's surface should theoretically be able to use the sunny 16 rule just as we do on earth, except perhaps for differences caused by the lack of atmosphere on the moon. I believe we perceive the moon as quite bright because it is always viewed against a very dark background. Yes, you are right, exposing it to appear in a photo as we expect it to, given our mental image of it, would indeed require overexposure ("looney 11"? ).

"This is not necessarily the "CORRECT" exposure! Exposure is subjective, not objective, and you set the exposure to render the effect that you as the photographer wish to create in the final photo."...........

............This ties into my thinking about exposure, in the scenario of the 3 stop difference between the tree and the background, my consideration would be just how much of the two different areas in the frame/does one predominate, as a consideration for an exposure bias toward either the tree, or the background. Also, tying into the above quote, my idea is that the 'correct' exposure doesn't always equate with what 'looks right'. One exposure might render an area 'dull' and 'dreary', and 1 stop over the indicated exsposure might give that area some 'pop'/'sparkle'.

The beauty of the incident meter(when configured w/its translucent dome) at least for me, is that in many situations(not all), you simply hold the dome in the same orientation as the subject matter, pointing the meter at the lens axis, and the highlights and shadows from a frontally lit scene will arrange themselves on the dome the same as what you're looking at. If it's a frontally lit scene, you can use an incident meter in this fashion where you're standing to get a value for something quite a ways off, if the lighting conditions are the same. What's a given, is that the values you get this way with an incident meter aren't gonna give you whether whatever film you're using will hold the highlights or shadows. And I think that's when the spot meter comes into play, and also when there's some extremely important detail that won't but rendered as a midtone, but will fall toward either extremes of highlight and/or shadow.

So much of using a meter is subjective, deciding when to bias between a shadow or a highlight, when to go by what the meter says, and when to ignore the meter, in order to make things look like you want them to look which to me is the correct exposure. Picking/deciding when to do it right, and when to shift gears and do it in a way that the 'book' says is technially wrong to get something to get what want.

An example might be an exterior shot of a subject in shadow/silhouette which is being hit by a 'rim' light from the sun which is 'burning up', one rendition might be a goodlooking shot w/a bias which 'tones down' the 'rim' light, a riskier decision to let the 'rim' light blow out, might result in a spectacular effect.

In the scenario of the difference in illumination between the tree and the background, it would be interesting to have 10 photographers shoot this very scene, the shots would all be different, each shooter would be doing what they thought was best way to shoot the shoot, ultimately the best looking shot might end up being exposed inorrectly in a 'technical sense', but then again, to me, whatever makes the shot look like you want it to, means you metered it 'correctly'.

Exposure to me is manipulating everything between white w/no detail, and black w/no detail with your meter, to line it up so the film represents it as you see it, while accepting the fact that the film will compress each tone from what your eye sees................................... plus the addition of either/both white w/no detail, black w/no detail to a shot, whenever it suits your purposes.

Either extreme w/no detail is a great tool to edit out/draw attention away from something(from the clothes to the face), to something else. So metering is used to enable the film to see something/print out w/detail, or to eliminate something you don't want the viewer to dwell on. That goes from 'high key' to 'silhouette'. In terms of landscapes, I always have decisions to make about the difference in illumination between the sky and the ground in the same shot, and how much I want the clouds to stand out for instance.

I like the pentax spotmeter V.

roteague said:

Provia is a great film, but probably won't give you what you are looking for. Velvia 50 is better choice. Try doing your fall color work with a warm polarizing filter (or polarizer and 81B) - I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the richness of the greens. Since, you are shooting LF, try one with the warm polarizer and one without as well.

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What about velvia 100 with a 81B?

Jonathan Brewer said:

Exposure to me is manipulating everything between white w/no detail, and black w/no detail with your meter, to line it up so the film represents it as you see it, while accepting the fact that the film will compress each tone from what your eye sees................................... plus the addition of either/both white w/no detail, black w/no detail to a shot, whenever it suits your purposes.

Either extreme w/no detail is a great tool to edit out/draw attention away from something(from the clothes to the face), to something else. So metering is used to enable the film to see something/print out w/detail, or to eliminate something you don't want the viewer to dwell on. That goes from 'high key' to 'silhouette'. In terms of landscapes, I always have decisions to make about the difference in illumination between the sky and the ground in the same shot, and how much I want the clouds to stand out for instance.

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That's fine if you are doing B&W, but with color transparencies you often don't have the film latitude to work with.

"That's fine if you are doing B&W, but with color transparencies you often don't have the film latitude to work with."................Yes, agreed, I used to shoot quite a bit of transparencies, I now shoot mostly b&w, Portra, and Infrared now, and I will shoot transparency film now now and then because of the fact that it's so unforgiving of overexposure.

I love the look of Velvia 100F, though.