Using an external meter by choice

[wiltw]

!. 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.

• re: #2. Yes, there are typically workarounds that can be used for real shooting. The comparison that I posted was to simply reveal current limitations (no workarounds) of metering modes in cameras, using one model.
• I alluded to Highlight vs Shadow reading earlier too...my OM-4 can do that, as can my Bronice with AE-III prism, and some others...but many cannot; ergo use of a handheld meter.
• Studio flash metering...one MF camera can to THAT, too. but most cannot.

The universal truth: ...handheld meter can do things that (some) cameras cannot, which is why I use handheld meter...when those things are needed!

 

[Sirius Glass]

I have yet to see a lease that includes upgrades. Maybe early turn in for a new lease on a newer piece of equipment.

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!

I do not have a business. I am retired. Therefore lease is not even a topic for discussion, as is tax write offs.

 

[wiltw]

I do not have a business. I am retired. Therefore lease is not even a topic for discussion, as is tax write offs.

Yeah, no photo gear leases for me for same reason. So digital MF is not in the picture here either, the backs are made of Unobtainium.
Besides, you'd probably have to pay for 3/4 of the MSRP as depreciation during the lease, making the monthly cost pretty prohibitive, with no write off of lease cost.

 

[Pieter12]

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!

Apart from people with tons of money to spend on hobby photography (and there are lots of those--look at the Leica and MF Digital forums, some pretty sad photos taken with tens of thousand of dollars worth of equipment) most MF digital customers are commercial pros who can charge the client for use of the equipment, either as a direct rental from a rental house, or for the use of the equipment they own or lease. So renting or leasing he latest and greatest gear, besides making the client fell like they are getting the best quality, makes economic sense to them.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Yeah, no photo gear leases for me for same reason. So digital MF is not in the picture here either, the backs are made of Unobtainium.
Besides, you'd probably have to pay for 3/4 of the MSRP as depreciation during the lease, making the monthly cost pretty prohibitive, with no write off of lease cost.

I can see not advantages to me switching to MF [or 35mm] digital photography only increased costs and many. YMMV so digisnappers do bother to respond.

 

[wiltw]

I can see not advantages to me switching to MF [or 35mm] digital photography only increased costs and many. YMMV so digisnappers do bother to respond.

High ISO shooting in very low light! It makes possible what is otherwise not possible...like film with f/0.9 lens, but even better !

 

[Pieter12]

I can see not advantages to me switching to MF [or 35mm] digital photography only increased costs and many. YMMV so digisnappers do bother to respond.

I have a number of digital cameras as well as film ones, 35mm and MF. I prefer the color results from a MF CCD sensor to the more modern CMOS and don't shoot, process or print analog color.

 

[Sirius Glass]

High ISO shooting in very low light! It makes possible what is otherwise not possible...like film with f/0.9 lens !

I have been doing time exposures since 1963, black & white and color prints and slides, and have never had problems with them. No stacking, not software games, not HDR, just open the shutter and take the photographs. Easy to do with film. Not timers shutting off the photographs or pixels burning out. Life is beautiful.

 

[Pieter12]

But the high ISO available of modern digital cameras is way more than any film, allowing hand-held exposures in low light. And no reciprocity failure to account for if you want long exposures.

 

[Sirius Glass]

But the high ISO available of modern digital cameras is way more than any film, allowing hand-held exposures in low light. And no reciprocity failure to account for if you want long exposures.

I have no problem working with reciprocity failure and it just comes with the territory. Digital long exposures can add many complications which do not arise with film and frankly I do not want to bother with. I have done more than enough digital photograph and digital videography on Voyager I and Voyager II to last me a lifetime. My Voyager I and Voyager II Jupiter Approach and Red Spot movies have more viewer than most movie director or producers get in a lift time. Been thar, done dat and all before 1980.

I started doing night photography with slide film in 1963 when "Popular Photography" published the first version on the Jiffy Calculator. f-sunny.com/night-exposures-in-a-jiffy/

 

[ciniframe]

I used to believe I was pretty good at eyeballing exposure. Then just got tired of trying to print too thin or too dense negatives. Much more consistent exposures resulted when using an incident meter.

 

[wiltw]

I have been doing time exposures since 1963, black & white and color prints and slides, and have never had problems with them. No stacking, not software games, not HDR, just open the shutter and take the photographs. Easy to do with film. Not timers shutting off the photographs or pixels burning out. Life is beautiful.

I am simply remembering back to high school photojournalism, ASA 400 Tri-X, and ASA 1250 Foyal X not available in 135. In adult life the limitation of color film, for so very long limited to ISO 400. 1/30 f/2 in so many situations, limitations cause by human subject motion not making slower speeds usable without fear of missing the shut because the subject turns their head. 6EV low light.
Now ISO 12800 allows speed +6EV greater, or shooting in -6EV dimmer light at same shutter speed, and that isn't really pushing digitral.

 

[grat]

Skip the digital Canon, which I believe is the offender, and that will save you $8,000.

You have failed the first hurdle-- know thine enemy. Canon's digital cameras do very nicely at metering, but you need to know what you're doing-- My 90D has 4 different metering modes, and they can easily deal with most of the situations outlined above. I normally use spot or center-weighted, but for the above challenges, I'd use either Evaluative or Partial.

Personally, if I really want to control the exposure, I use my Soligor knock-off. But I've been very satisfied with the ability of my Reveni not-a-spot meter as well. It's doing center-weighted, I believe, but so far, it's managed to handle a wide range of scenes-- not bad for something that weighs 1/3 of an ounce (9g) and fits in a cold shoe.

 

[Sirius Glass]

You have failed the first hurdle-- know thine enemy. Canon's digital cameras do very nicely at metering, but you need to know what you're doing-- My 90D has 4 different metering modes, and they can easily deal with most of the situations outlined above. I normally use spot or center-weighted, but for the above challenges, I'd use either Evaluative or Partial.

Personally, if I really want to control the exposure, I use my Soligor knock-off. But I've been very satisfied with the ability of my Reveni not-a-spot meter as well. It's doing center-weighted, I believe, but so far, it's managed to handle a wide range of scenes-- not bad for something that weighs 1/3 of an ounce (9g) and fits in a cold shoe.

I was not criticizing the Canon camera nor the metering system. The object was to save you $8,000 which could be better put to use by you skiing or traveling elsewhere in the world. For that kind of money I could easily pass up a camera or light metering system when there are just so many less expensive systems that can do an equivalent job. However if that camera is a must have item for you then no amount of logic or analysis will convince you otherwise.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I am simply remembering back to high school photojournalism, ASA 400 Tri-X, and ASA 1250 Foyal X not available in 135. In adult life the limitation of color film, for so very long limited to ISO 400. 1/30 f/2 in so many situations, limitations cause by human subject motion not making slower speeds usable without fear of missing the shut because the subject turns their head. 6EV low light.
Now ISO 12800 allows speed +6EV greater, or shooting in -6EV dimmer light at same shutter speed, and that isn't really pushing digitral.

The night photography I did in 1963 was done with Kodachrome 64, Ektachrome 64, Ektachrome 64 T, AnscoChrome 64, AnscoChrome 64T, AnscoChrome 100, AnscoChrome 100T, and DynaChrome 64 among others. Yes there were color shifts of varying amounts which were corrected by the photo labs when I had the slides printed. If people moved, they blurred. I did not care. If cars moved, then they left behind the trails from the front and rear lights. That was just what one would expect from tripod mounted long exposure photography. Those photographs were not taken with a then state of the art SLR, I was using a Voigtlander Vito IIb, a folding 35mm camera without a range finder.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

My first proper camera was a 1960's Praktica Nova with no meter, and as soon as I could I bought a Soviet (cheap) Leningrad 4 selenium meter, which perhaps wasn't very good, but was better than my teenage guesses. But since I simplified my camera holdings (in theory, to an F6 and a Hasselblad, although the 4x5 didn't sell, and I never offered the Olympus Pens or OMs), I have used a handheld meter an awful lot. Not with the F6, you understand, as part of the beauty of that camera is that it does things for me, and does them well. That includes its matrix metering, which has only very rarely made a mistake. But with many meterless 35mm, medium format and large format cameras along the way, I have gradually found myself not only comfortable with a handheld meter, but actually preferring it sometimes, even when the camera has its own internal meter. The meter I've settled on is a Polaris SPD100 which I bought simply as a corded flash meter for large format. But it does reflective and incident metering without flash, and also has the option of displaying EV which is good for the old Hasselblad lenses. It doesn't seem to be available anymore at B&H, so as a backup I have a Sekonic L-308XU, which is so similar I suspect Sekonic must have bought Polaris in order to market their version of the design. I only use it as an incident meter, flash or not, and it never seems to let me down. I compared it to a Gossen Digisix, an Adorama 1º spotmeter (Pentax clone) and a Sekonic L-758, and sold all of them as I found the Polaris was giving better exposures.
I've been having an extended fling with Olympus cameras lately, both half and full frame, and find myself choosing to use the OM-1 and OM-2n with the external meter just because - well, because of what? Because I can, because it feels like more control (which I know I can do with the internal meters by overriding them), and because I'm not photographing the kind of subjects that require lightning fast choices about exposure. But ultimately, it's because I find incident metering easier to get right than reflective metering plus adjustments based on the subject and the lighting. It looks harder and more complex, but it's actually a lazy and quick way to the desired result. Given that the OM-1 needs no battery except for the meter, and the OM-2n's need a pair of batteries just to make the shutter work, it won't be a surprise that the OM-1 is beginning to be picked up more often - I don't even need to remember to flick the switch on the top plate, and I have wasted film in the OM-2n's by forgetting to do that and assuming the manually set shutter and aperture would be correct. BTW, the original OM-1 is a great buy at present if you don't need the hot shoe connections of the OM-1n for the proprietary Olympus TTL flash - and who does? They all need a visit to Huntington, NY whatever the designation, so may as well not pay for things you don't need.

Does anyone else find themselves using a handheld meter even when their camera has a functional internal meter? If I'm just a throwback, a dinosaur or an atavist, I'm pretty sure there are others here to keep me company.

for MF and LF and for all flash photography, I use a hand-held meter(Gossen LunaStar F2. For 35mm, I trust Nikon's 3D metering blindly. With that, correct exposures are not on my problem list anymore.

 

[AgX]

To sum my thoughts on this:

-) few cameras with built in meters yield incident metering
-) no SLR yields incident metering

external meters
-) may yield incident metering
-) may be more sensitive
-) may take accessories
-) may yield own aiming optics
-) may yield a variety of metering angles, independent on the taking lens
-) may have a more pleasing scale (e.g. nulling/placable at Lunasix F and Profisix)

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

To sum my thoughts on this:

-) few cameras with built in meters yield incident metering
-) no SLR yields incident metering

external meters
-) may yield incident metering
-) may be more sensitive
-) may take accessories
-) may yield own aiming optics
-) may yield a variety of metering angles, independent on the taking lens
-) may have a more pleasing scale (e.g. nulling/placable at Lunasix F and Profisix)

Also, another thing to carry and waste time with.

 

[BrianShaw]

Also, another thing to carry and waste time with.

Another thing to carry, but rarely a waste of time… unless using the wrong meter or not knowing how to use the one you have.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Another thing to carry, but rarely a waste of time… unless using the wrong meter or not knowing how to use the one you have.

Well put!

 

[gone]

I've owned a lot of handheld meters, and always felt put upon when using them. They slowed me way down, but outside you didn't need one that much. Inside, you needed a good one that's sensitive to low light, and that usually means large and expensive.

My main camera is a 35 mm SLR AF camera that is used with w/ MF lenses. It gives me TTL metering in center weighted, matrix and spot, but the spot meter is pretty much all that's used. It's just so much faster and easier to work with things like motor drive, AE, AE Lock, and spot metering available all in one package, and the $30 price tag don't hurt.

 

[Pieter12]

To sum my thoughts on this:

-) few cameras with built in meters yield incident metering
-) no SLR yields incident metering

external meters
-) may yield incident metering
-) may be more sensitive
-) may take accessories
-) may yield own aiming optics
-) may yield a variety of metering angles, independent on the taking lens
-) may have a more pleasing scale (e.g. nulling/placable at Lunasix F and Profisix)

An incident meter built-in to a camera would be pretty ridiculous, since incident light should be measured at the subject's position, not the taking position. You might as well use a handheld incident meter at that point.

 

[AgX]

An incident meter built-in to a camera would be pretty ridiculous, since incident light should be measured at the subject's position, not the taking position. You might as well use a handheld incident meter at that point.

I do not understand your point at all.
What difference it makes whether one brings the camera or a meter to the subject?
(I leave aside mass and volume, which may matter in either case.)

Furthermore, at many situations incident lighting is the same at camera and subject location.

There were indeed cameras with built-in incident-lighting meter, I myself got two of them, including my very first camera.

 

[Pieter12]

I do not understand your point at all.
What difference it makes whether one brings the camera or a meter to the subject?
(I leave aside mass and volume, which may matter in either case.)

Furthermore, at many situations incident lighting is the same at camera and subject location.

There were indeed cameras with built-in incident-lighting meter, I myself got two of them, including my very first camera.

I can only imagine sticking a camera in someone's face to get a reading. Not practical at all. That's why no one makes such a thing anymore.

 

[AgX]

Again, I do not see a difference between holding a camera or a meter in front of ones face (not sticking into, as you put it).

There are petite and huge cameras. About the same for meters.


By the way, modern photographers with their modern cameras just put their cameras the same way in front of a face, just to show people the photograph of them they have just taken...