Using an external meter by choice
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I think everyone should use whatever meter they want as long as it is not digital. I use a divining rod. I made a leather holster for it.
I started with a clip on meter with my Voigtlander Vito II in the early 1960's for slides. Then in 1966 I bought a Minolta SR7 and used its light meter for slides. I used Minolta SRT for slides with their built in meters until the 1980 when I switched to color prints. I continued with Minolta until my girl friend won a new Tameron 28mm to 300mm Tameron AF zoom lens for which I switched to the Nikon N75 in 2004. It was only after I joined APUG that I started thinking about separate light meters and spot meters. My point is that I had used built in light meters for slides and later color prints for decades without any exposure problems. The only thing that the separate light meters bring to the party is more technical approaches to situations that do not necessarily require them. They are used for unusual situations [light on light or dark on dark] or enhanced shadow or high light details and are not obligatory. Admittedly we all have our photographic drugs of choice.
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At the beginning i used the TTL meter of my Spotmatic F. Worked perfectly. (Except for the obvious cases like snow or sky where you need to compensate and/or filter with slide film)
When i got my Hasselblad, i still used the Spotmatic for metering. Worked perfectly.
Then i got a Sekonic L-308S handheld meter. Worked.
After that, when i resumed photography after my year long hiatus, i read an awful lot about tone values, contrast range etc. and got an additional spotmeter. Created as much problems as it solved
Sometimes i feel like it gets more complicated the more one thinks about it. Years ago, i just did an integral measurement and went with it. It was usual that a 120 roll of RVP100 did not contain any significant exposure errors.
Nowadays i worry about where to place the value of this leaf or that stone etc and i get more wrong exposures.
So i got an PME3 metering prism and Acute Matte screen to have TTL with the Hasselblad again. Sped up my workflow quite a bit, but it's heavy and bulky (wont fit my smallest backpack anymore) and the mirrored movements necessary to work with waist level finders are
so heavily absorbed in my muscle memory, it's hard to get used to the prism.
Then i did some extensive testing where i measured out a scene on several points with the spotmeter and an integral meter to get a feeling how different values look on film.
My plan is to use the prism or external integral metering by default and to only use the spotmeter in situations with tricky lighting. I came to terms with spot metering, but i still do not have all the experience where to place certain tones.
When i got my Hasselblad, i still used the Spotmatic for metering. Worked perfectly.
Then i got a Sekonic L-308S handheld meter. Worked.
After that, when i resumed photography after my year long hiatus, i read an awful lot about tone values, contrast range etc. and got an additional spotmeter. Created as much problems as it solved
Sometimes i feel like it gets more complicated the more one thinks about it. Years ago, i just did an integral measurement and went with it. It was usual that a 120 roll of RVP100 did not contain any significant exposure errors.
Nowadays i worry about where to place the value of this leaf or that stone etc and i get more wrong exposures.
So i got an PME3 metering prism and Acute Matte screen to have TTL with the Hasselblad again. Sped up my workflow quite a bit, but it's heavy and bulky (wont fit my smallest backpack anymore) and the mirrored movements necessary to work with waist level finders are
so heavily absorbed in my muscle memory, it's hard to get used to the prism.
Then i did some extensive testing where i measured out a scene on several points with the spotmeter and an integral meter to get a feeling how different values look on film.
My plan is to use the prism or external integral metering by default and to only use the spotmeter in situations with tricky lighting. I came to terms with spot metering, but i still do not have all the experience where to place certain tones.
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- KenS
- Deleted
- Reason: Hit send by mistake (fat finger problem
All my meters are digital. The first meter I ever bought was back in the late 70's the Minolta Flashmeter II.
Actually, they are still available. Made in Russia, look on Ebay for a PX625 battery, they come wrapped in little squares of paper. I bought from this seller: https://www.ebay.ca/itm/293899862786?hash=item446dcc0302:g:91QAAOSwWilhwzlS
and they worked worked well in my Gossen meter, but didn't quite fit in a friends Leica M5. They seem ever so slightly taller than the original cells from the 70's.
If I intend to shoot in 'brain dead mode',
I will switch to Evaluative metering. And sometimes, even 'smart' metering (matrix/evaluative) is fooled, like here...
...where the 18% grey card is underexposed signifantly, where I deliberately chose AF on top of the card hoping to bias the evaluative reading to that location.
...rather than use Evaluative with no specific zone for bias, where the 18% grey card is even more underexposed
And here is how a handheld spotmeter exposure looks...
...and the 18% grey is exposed to its inherent brightness. If the camera had spotmeter, whose metering zone moved to coincide with the AF zone, that would have worked, too.
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Deleted member 88956
Sorry, I'm not getting your point. This does not prove my statement wrong. Handheld meters are around because they are needed, yet backlit scenes can be compensated for fairly easily without spot too. Grey cards, especially of last 10 years or so, are so inconsistent especially with their reflective properties, one needs to be careful if using one for critical evaluation too.If I intend to shoot in 'brain dead mode',
...where the 18% grey card is underexposed signifantly, where I deliberately chose AF on top of the card hoping to bias the evaluative reading to that location.
...rather than use Evaluative with no specific zone for bias, where the 18% grey card is even more underexposed
And here is how a handheld spotmeter exposure looks...
...and the 18% grey is exposed to its inherent brightness. If the camera had spotmeter, whose metering zone moved to coincide with the AF zone, that would have worked, too.
None of the cameras I use these days have built-in light meters. I generally use a cell phone light meter app to take a base reading when I start shooting and then use the principles of Sunny 16 to change the settings as the lighting and/or subject reflectivity changes.
My point of that post is that in-camera meters cannot alway meter a scene to the needs of the photographer, and that handheld meters -- understood so they dependably meter what is important to the photographer -- can supplement and do a better job at times. (Yes, like camera meters, handheld meters can give wrong exposures, too!)
- A camera meter cannot meter the light from a studio flash.
- Most camera meters do not allow one to meter the lowest brightness vs highest brightness in a scene, so exposure point can be chosen which allows detail to be captured in both.
- A camera meter is fooled (unless the USER compensates properly) for a scene like a bride in white gown in a snowy scene; a handheld incident meter is not.
- A camera meter would never have been able to meter this...
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If I intend to shoot in 'brain dead mode',
...where the 18% grey card is underexposed signifantly, where I deliberately chose AF on top of the card hoping to bias the evaluative reading to that location.
...rather than use Evaluative with no specific zone for bias, where the 18% grey card is even more underexposed
And here is how a handheld spotmeter exposure looks...
...and the 18% grey is exposed to its inherent brightness. If the camera had spotmeter, whose metering zone moved to coincide with the AF zone, that would have worked, too.
Your are not using the built in meter according to the way it was designed or as specified in the manual.
- On newer [menu driven] cameras you can set it on backlit mode.
- On newer cameras such as the F4, F100, F6 or Canon equivalents one can select a spot mode reading.
- Ignoring the first two just open the lens one f/stop.
- I used a 'newer menu driven camera (2014)...it has no 'backlit mode'.
- On my newer camera (2014 model) I am not permitted to move the spotmetering zone to coincide with the AF zone selected...one has to buy the $8000 Canon to have that feature.
- I used Evaluative mode, so I had no idea what level of exposure compensation was inherent to the programming by Canon...so 'open up 1EV' might have caused severe OVER exposure, when my compensation is added to the Evaluative compensation!
Sell your Canon equipment immediately and change over to the Nikon F4, F100, or F6 and your problems will be solved. I am here to enable you to step up in life.
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It would be nice to have evaluative metering in conjunction with fixed f/stop and shutter speed (manual shutter with suggested exposure).
I have heard stage shows are hard for evaluative meters.
And that is where I am fighting the maximum aperture of the lens against camera shake. It would be best not to be surprised by a quarter second exposure when a sixtieth would have worked. Or worse, a misdirected light giving you a 250th when you needed a sixtieth.
There is that problem and “continuity”, where I would expect two side-by-side frames to have the same exposures.
I have heard stage shows are hard for evaluative meters.
And that is where I am fighting the maximum aperture of the lens against camera shake. It would be best not to be surprised by a quarter second exposure when a sixtieth would have worked. Or worse, a misdirected light giving you a 250th when you needed a sixtieth.
There is that problem and “continuity”, where I would expect two side-by-side frames to have the same exposures.
Sell your Canon equipment immediately and change over to the Nikon F4, F100, or F6 and your problems will be solved. I am here to enable you to step up in life.
- My inventory of gear is a pretty harsh impediment to changing brands!
- My budget is also an equally harsh impediment to buying an $8000 Canon, so I can continue to use my existing lenses and accessories.
Should you wish to become my benefactor, I would happily consider either of the two above. But the fact that I have many friends who were staunch shooters of Nikon film gear for over 4 decades, but then switched to Canon digital, makes #1 less likely as well for me.
The demise of most of my favorite emulsions makes resurrection of my film gear also not highly likely. And I would have to switch SLR from Olympus OM to Nikon. So I will continue to use handheld meter to supplement what cameras cannot do!
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Should you wish to become my benefactor, I would happily consider either of the two above. But the fact that I have many friends who were staunch shooters of Nikon film gear for over 5 decades, but then switched to Canon digital, makes #1 less likely as well for me.
- My inventory of gear is a pretty harsh impediment to changing brands!
- My budget is also an equally harsh impediment to buying an $8000 Canon, so I can continue to use my existing lenses and accessories.
The demise of most of my favorite emulsions makes resurrection of my film gear also not highly likely. So I use handheld meter to supplement what cameras cannot do!
Skip the digital Canon, which I believe is the offender, and that will save you $8,000. Take your wife or SO out for a good dinner and stick to film cameras. You will find that you can live in the film world for a lot less money than the digital world. If I went digital with Hasselblads I would be spending money in increments of $10,000 and not being satisfied with the smaller image size. We must band together in mutual support to enjoy our interests without stressing our cash flows.
If you went to digital Hassy, I would consider you foolhardy! I would love to have a digital back for my Bronica to be able to shoot color >ISO 1600, but they keep obsoleteing $20k-40k backs every couple of years. And 6x6 cameras are still NOT even 'full frame 645' format size!
I will heed your advice to take my wife out to dinner (again), once this COVID superspike subsides, hopefully in a few weeks.
Given the cost of film and processing vs. the depreciation of digital gear in the market, I should do an analysis of the crossover point of digital vs. film. OTOH, it is getting harder and harder to find local pro grade photofininshing labs who continue the tight process control I was accustomed to 30 years ago, so I won't bother to do that crossover analysis.
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For many years none of my cameras had working meters. I used a very small Sekonic Auto-Lumi with a selenium cell. Most of the time I was using Tri-X or occasionally Plus-x. Results were always pretty good. I knew very little about metering technique and normally took a reflected reading from my palm with no adjustment. Any time it got too dark to meter reliably I’d simply set the maximum aperture and slowest speed I could hand hold (still my technique of choice today). The latitude of the film probably helped a lot.
25 years later the Sekonic is still accurate, but the meters in my Nikons are so good I don’t normally need it. It still sees use with unmetered cameras though. I love that it doesn’t need a battery. It’s ready to go any time without question.
25 years later the Sekonic is still accurate, but the meters in my Nikons are so good I don’t normally need it. It still sees use with unmetered cameras though. I love that it doesn’t need a battery. It’s ready to go any time without question.
If you went to digital Hassy, I would consider you foolhardy! I would love to have a digital back for my Bronica to be able to shoot color >ISO 1600, but they keep obsoleteing $20k-40k backs every couple of years. And 6x6 cameras are still NOT full 646 format size!
I will heed your advice to take my wife out to dinner (again), once this COVID superspike subsides, hopefully in a few weels.
Given the cost of film and processing vs. the depreciation of digital gear in the market, I should do an analysis of the crossover point of digital vs. film. OTOH, it is getting harder and harder to find local pro grade photofininshing labs who continue the tight process control I was accustomed to 3 years ago, so I won't bother to do that crossover analysis.
I agree the cost of the digital backs + the software greatly out weight the advantages and the quality of the digital products is still not on par with film.
I have not seen a good recent film vs. MF digital shootout to see how the two stack up today.
The $20-40k prcie itself makes the comparison moot, other than to a pro with a lease on digital backs, where the terms of the lease make available the most recent stuff as they come out. 'Buy' is not a consideration!
About 3-4 years ago, I found a photographer with a digital Hassy who was local to me, and who was willing to do a 'shoot out' comparison of the Hassy color reproduction vs. my Canon. We did find (and publish on POTN) the 'same shot', mounting both cameras on one tripod using Arca-compatible QR plates, that there was a discernable advantage in Hassy color reproduction of flowers in a nursery. We did not attempt to compare detail resolution, because the debate at hand purely revolved around color reproduction advantage in Hassy. I used LR to bring in RAW files from both, and deliberately altered no postprocessing parameters from '0' to compare color reproduction. Yes, some advantage...worth $20-40k ?!
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I have yet to see a lease that includes upgrades. Maybe early turn in for a new lease on a newer piece of equipment.
!. Use either AE lock or AF lock so you can recompose after either focusing or metering.
2. Just as you would with a hand-held meter, take note of the exposure, compose and set the camera to manual with the exposure settings you have noted.
Somewhere I got the idea that lease with upgrades were found. for medium format digital backs. At least, with a lease, you simply get a new product associated with a new lease, at the expiration of the current lease! Like cars!
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