[bmw]

Pro photographer Frank Doorhof has posted a timely little piece on the often misunderstood lightmeter. He discusses why you should at least find out about them and give one a try, and clears up some myths and misconceptions about them. He also provides some tips for effective use of them in studio.

Doorhof is not endorsed by any lightmeter companies and he's writing purely as a public service.

The light-meter is a tool, it’s nothing less and nothing more. If you don’t use a light-meter you’re not a bad person, you are without any doubt not a lesser photographer than someone who is using it [...] I for one however strongly believe that someone that is into photography should at least look at the light meter to see what it does and how it operates, because if you use one, one thing is for sure it WILL speed up your workflow considerably and also helps you to create the same quality of exposure over and over again.

A topic on the light meter ~~ Frank Doorhof

[wtlwdwgn]

Thanks for the link! Excellent commentary.

[Kayaker-J]

Yes, thanks! I recently picked up an example of the non-metering F prism head for the venerable Nikon F and F2 here, so I will need to address the light meter issue head-on for those when so configured. I'm also going to experiment with a small Nikon Pronea APS film camera (Nikon F mount) I picked up specifically to serve as a stand-alone (zoom) meter with Nikon matrix metering on board.

[lesmore49]

I have two lightmeters. One, a Sekonic which I bought in '68 to use with my Pentax S1a...it didn't have a meter.

About 15 years later I bought a second Sekonic...L-798 or something....think I have the model number wrong. I have a few meterless cameras...Leica rangefinder, the S1a, a Mamiya medium format, a Zeiss Super ikonta B medium format.

Both still work. I still carry my second meter in my camera bag, along with a gray card....sometimes to meter...when I'm taking pictures with my digital K10D, K-5 or K-m.

[Kayaker-J]

Is there a light meter app today for either Apple iOS or Android devices that is accurate enough, consistent enough, and conceived properly from a real photographer's standpoint, which might do the job for serious photography under most reasonably well-illuminated conditions? I'd expect the specialized instruments to handle more situations and a greater variety of needs with grace and aplomb, of course.

[Class A]

He discusses why you should at least find out about them and give one a try, and clears up some myths and misconceptions about them.

I cannot say that this article convinced me to get a light meter.

Any DSLR has a built-in light meter for reflective metering. He doesn't explain why adding incident metering is so useful.

I can think of using incident metering in order to establish certain lighting ratios of multiple flashes sources, but there will be tweaking based on visual feedback afterwards anyhow, so I'm not sure you are gaining that much.

His argument against using histograms is flawed. If you produce an image with a well-behaved histogram you can tweak it to the "accurate exposure" afterwards. AFAIC, there is no such thing as "accurate exposure" that can be mechanically determined. Sometimes you want skin darker, sometimes you want it brighter; the light meter will always just give you one interpretation and I don't see why making sure you captured the full tonal range by using a histogram is any worse.

I don't really like how portrait photographers using light meters almost touch the face of the model with the meter. I'd rather avoid that myself.

I'm not saying I'm categorically against light meters, but I'm yet to be convinced that spending money on one would be worth it.

[maxfield_photo]

AFAIC, there is no such thing as "accurate exposure" that can be mechanically determined. Sometimes you want skin darker, sometimes you want it brighter; the light meter will always just give you one interpretation and I don't see why making sure you captured the full tonal range by using a histogram is any worse.

It really depends on one's definition of "accurate exposure". I use two phrases when talking about exposure accuracy, "proper exposure" and "good tonality", both of which are important, but I use them to mean distinctly different things. By my definition, "proper exposure" is achieved when the subject renders exactly as he/she/it did in real life (The scene is less important, but that's the topic for another post). Light stuff will render light, dark stuff will render dark, and middle gray will render exactly middle gray. That's what an incident light meter tells me, 'how much light is falling on this subject?' and I normally base my exposure on that. What you get ideally is a print that could be held next to the original scene with no discernible difference of luminance values. That works well for portraits, but not as well for landscapes. Of course, it goes without saying that one needs to use a color managed workflow for the results to have any meaning.

"Good tonality" on the other hand deals with controlling the contrast of a scene from capture to print which may be wider or narrower than that of the final medium. A picture exhibits "good tonality" (usually) when there is a full range of tones from black to white and good retention of detail in both the highlights and shadows. This is what Ansel was after, and this is what the histogram tells you. The histogram is, in a nutshell, the zone system distilled. A scene with a wider tonal range than the paper can reproduce must be "scaled down" to fit within the limitations of the medium, and objects, particularly at the far ends of the tonal scale, can rarely be "properly exposed" if the image is to look realistic. Even objects towards the center of the tonal scale can experience slight shifts in tonality when mapping a particularity contrasty scene like a sunset to a piece of paper, or even a computer screen.

"Good tonality" is tremendously important in black and white photography, probably more so than "proper" exposure, but in color photography, proper exposure should not be ignored. This is because exposure is inextricably linked to saturation. An overexposued picture tends to look washed out, this is because colors like blue and red cannot reach their highest levels of saturation (chroma) at higher luminance levels. They are, essentially, darker colors. Conversely yellows will tend to look muddy when underexposed. Therefore "proper exposure", which is to say exposure based on the amount of light falling on the subject is the only way to get truly accurate colors across the board.

Now, can one determine "proper exposure" through reflective readings? Sure, and 5 dollar 18% gray card goes a long, long way towards achieving the accuracy of an incident light meter, but it's a pain in the butt trying to judge manual flash/strobes that way. I use my light meter religiously, in fact, I rarely use my camera's meter for anything. I feel like I'm at the mercy of the machine when I have to switch to Av or Tv mode, consequently I only do it when there is no time to use my hand held meter, and luckily, as a portrait shooter, those times are rare. But that's just how I shoot, not that my way is any more or less correct than anyone else.