Originally posted by stevebrot I was taught that as the way to use of the incident meter, at the subject, with the omnidome pointed towards the camera. The meter measures the same light mix as that incident on the subject. Of course, that is sort if hard with lions and such.
Steve
By double lighting I meant for example the scene includes a large area under a opaque canopy, and thus there are the usual 5-7 stops range outside the canopy, and under the canopy the light levels are much lower, a different 5-7 stops. If the canopy is small and/or somewhat transparent, one could use the incident in both areas and use the mean. As the two areas diverge (e.g, more the 10-12 stop range) one needs to decide which slice of the light range to capture.
---------- Post added 10-26-20 at 08:37 AM ----------
Viking42 you say "Incident light meters are used when I want correct exposure on a central subject and don't care about the background, where a camera's averaging meter would give the wrong reading."
That is the (usually) the case where the background is differently lit than the main subject, and far away so tones merge. And if it is you can:
1. often estimate the difference
2. also use a reflected reading of the background.
In most scenes in my experience (and I pretty much exclusively used incident meter for decades, with color negative and slide film). You still have the issue is the DR range such that everything will be captured well, and if not you may need to measure both to decide (for example) how much flash fill to use.
If you are doing B&W negative film, depending on the scene DR and what is important, the incident meter does not replace the (ideal) spot meter (or narrower angle reflected light meter)--but the incident meter is perfect if the midtone areas are to look like midtones. And you can recognize when to adjust the reading or use the other meter.