In a private message to me, D Harvey asked:
Originally posted by D Harvey: Thank you for your responce on light meters. I am going to look for the sekonic 358.
I was wandering what it means to chimp?
How do I use 3 bits of string and a gray card?
I found it interesting that you shoot film, do you send it out for processing or is it black and white and you have a dark room? I have a darkroom in storage right now as I don't have room or time to use it in the home we have. I love shooting B/W and making my own prints, I was just starting to get the hang of it when it had to go to storage... I miss it.
Thanks D
I asked it it was ok to post his question and my response to the thread so here it is:
As far as light meters go the Sekonic 358 is a little darling of a meter. It has most of the features of it's big brother the 758 sans the spot meter and ability to create custom camera profile. In fact, I think there may even be a spotmeter attachment you can buy if you later decide that you want to use one. The main application for that these days is for subjects that emit light, like a neon sign, or highly reflective materials like chrome, or if you shoot film and you're a Zone System purist.
"Chimping" is simple, it means you take a shot and check your camera's LCD, take a shot and check the LCD, take a shot... You get the idea. You'll see a lot of new photographers doing this and it looks very unprofessional, especially to a paying client. Don't get me wrong, pros chimp too, they've done it for years. Back in the film days, medium format studio cameras could be fitted with Polaroid backs so that the photographer could check the exposure and quality of light. The difference is once the light were set up (which was always
before the client got there) the Polaroid back was removed and the film back was attached, and after that there was no chimping to see if exposure was right, unless there was a major lighting change. A light meter helps to eliminate the guesswork when the pressure is on and time is of the essence.
As for the gray card, it's the poor man's light meter. Actually gray cards are astonishingly useful when you compare the cost to that of a light meter. Here's how it works. First turn off all but the light you want to meter (you can have a reasonable amount of ambient light if you're shutter speed is above 1/125th and your aperture is small, i.e. you don't have to work in the dark). You set up the gray card in the position where your subject will be, put your camera in manual mode, and get your aperture, ISO and shutter speed locked in. Let's say you want your key light to meter at f/8 at ISO 100, so set your camera for that. Stand under the light you want to meter and fill your camera's viewfinder with the gray card, and start snapping photos and checking the histogram. Adjust the power level or the distance of the light after each shot. When you see a spike directly in the center of your histogram, you have found the proper exposure for that light. Then do the same for the other lights, standing under each in turn. If you want your key light to be in a 2:1 ratio to your fill, you will want the fill to be at f/5.6 for this example, so set your camera's aperture to that. Also you can do the same for the background with the gray card as close as you can get it to the background. Most of the time I don't worry about getting background exposure precise, but if I'm doing a high key shoot, it's important. Then go back to your normal shooting position, and place the gray card again where the subject will be, and take one more exposure with all the lights turned on, this time only adjust your aperture, leave the output levels of the lights alone. This will give you your working exposure, say f/11, and it is to
that aperture that you set your camera and you're off an rolling, just make sure your subject doesn't move too far forward or back.
The bits of string are used to measure the distance from the lights to your subject. Remember in grade school when you'd go to have your school pictures taken? The photographer would have everyone in a line and bring them in one at a time and sit them on a stool, and then run a piece of string from the light to your chin. That's because you can think of f/11 as an exposure, OR, you can think of it as a
distance. That's what the string does. It tells you at
this distance, proper exposure is f/11 at ISO 100, or whatever (once you've found it of course by using a gray card or a light meter). If you cut the light back by a stop, now proper exposure at the same distance becomes f/8. It doesn't matter what color the subject's skin is, what color his or her clothes are, "proper" exposure is based on the amount of light hitting the subject, not the amount being reflected. This is called "stringing" your lights.
As for the question about film, I shoot color and black and white film, both negatives and transparencies. I'm only just starting to develop my own, but I'm really finding that I get much better results then when I send them off to the lab. I'm especially excited because I'm starting to do some real zone system photography. I do shoot roll film for the moment, but that just means I have to commit to one development time for the entire roll, but I can push and pull to my heart's delight and not have to pay the lab extra and wait another week. The Sekonic spotmeter is invaluable to me in this effort. I keep a notebook and write down my highlight and shadow readings, and what I can't compensate for in the developing tank I can try to fix when I go to print using multi grade contrast filters in the enlarger. It's still a work in progress, so I'd prefer not to give advice until I've refined my technique, but I can say without hesitation that the light meter is at the center of whole process. Heck, my old Yashica TLR doesn't even have a light meter, so I'd really be stabbing in the dark without it.
Hope this has helped and like I said in my post, don't think of a light meters as something you
have to buy, as if it were a chore. Sure, you can get by without it but instead think of it like a lens, something exciting and sexy. It's a tool that will dramatically improve your photos if you learn how to use it.
-Max