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In an earlier thread, starshuffler asked if light meters are better than using your camera for metering a scene...I didn't want to use my brain to think today but if I don't it'll turn to mush.... My contention is that a light meter while certainly a useful piece of equipment (I plan on getting one myself), is for the most part unecessary to the average camera user. My thought is that a camera's built in meter *should be* for the most part all that one needs to get a good metering of your scene. The reasons: 1. Most camera's these days have 3 types of metering: a. Matrix Metering- the metering is broken up into multi- sections where the camera averages the different areas to come up with a fairly good assessment of the light in the whole scene and then select proper exposure based on those averages. b. Center-Weighted Metering- Where the light is averaged in the center (75% for my camera) of the picture area to come up with an assessement of what the exposure should be. This was the standard for camera's made about 20 years ago. c. Spot Metering- Subjects brightness is measured only in the very center of the picture area (1%) This type of metering is useful when the exposure of a specific area is important. For most people the Matrix Metering system of their cameras should be sufficient however there are times when one of the other metering modes may be used. This is where creative control and working in manuel mode come into play. Example; a scene where there are many different levels of brightness and shadow. You could use spot metering to get different readings of each area. From there you would figure out how many stops difference in each area and average out your scene the way you want. Don't want that snow to be 18% grey...meter, get your reading, move your aperture of shutter speed two stops down. Of course a light meter can do this stuff too, but so can your camera! Just another piece of extra equipment to lug around. A light meter for me, becomes a necessity *if* you have lenses that are not compatible with your camera (older ones maybe) and you cannot get a proper TTL (thru-the-lens) reading. Now I feel like I maybe begin to ramble or repeat myself so I'm going to stop there.... I found a link which I've included, might be of interest to some. I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on this.....add something to it...

LOL, Mich. That seems like a lot of brainwork already to me! Thanks. Well, my camera (because it's really old) only has center-weighted metering so I don't have much of a choice. I must admit though, handhelds are a hassle sometimes. hee hee hee (*

It's really nice to work with spot metering, if you have a nice Auto Exposure Lock button. You just meter the 'grey-ish' areas, or the shadows if you want more detail in the shadows, or the light areas if you want more contrast, hold the AE-L, make your composition and shoot! But seperate meter is nice, cause the in-camera meter never gets the on-surface details. That does make a difference, although I never use one myself :)

Very good question Michelle, whilst I agree I think there are occasions when a decent light meter is preferable esp with say portrait work with studio lighting,or Macro work. But as Rork points out nothing that cant be gotten around with good technique like using the AE-L. There may be times to get a particular effect when just knowing your film and bracketing can also come to our aid. Dont know what others think but my digital camera is less than satisfactory here?

Interesting point, danob......wouldn't a digital camera with a very good metering system be better than an analog camera with a less good system ? I haven't got a clue.

Yeah some of the better SLR Types probaby have similar metering to the best film cameras for sure, I was referring to my own which does not have the AE lock facility you mentioned Rork as a solution to tricky metering situations an important consideration for me as I like Nature and wildlife photography.

Thanks guys and girls, I have got AE lock on my new camera, (used only twice,the camera that is) I will try out what you have explained and see how I get on or not as the case may be.

Ok...now I have a question....wouldn't AE/Lock only be used if you are working in a program mode? I've never used it before (digital or slr)...I work only in manuel and then I do a couple of in camera meter readings and adjust from there. At that point my settings aren't going to change...unless I tell it too so why would I need AE/Lock, or have I been doing something wrong all this time?

Ohhh! I have never used it before, I don't have it on my Yashica, only on the Canon. Now I am getting really confused. Don't think it's on the old digital one either.

No you are just doing the same thing just taking the reading and making the settings manualy instead of relying on the Auto function! We are just lazy Michelle or I am! My film camera Canon A1 works both ways as it has a button I just hold down once I am satisfied with reading I just step back and shoot. I think? lol. But no such facility on my Digital Fuji4700 Finepix zoom unless somebody knows how to do this with this camera?

I'm working with the Minolta Dimage 5 and found that the AE /locking technique (basically using the cam as a light meter) really improved my pictures a lot. I only rarely go fully manual with my camera ... (only for those special shots)

We REALLY need some old guy (like Alpha) to write us up a tutorial on the zone system. I tend to agree that anything a handheld meter can do, a through the lens meter can 'prolly do beter or just as well, however all types of meters have to be used correctly. For TTL metering, "correctly" is very often not just pointing an shooting, but metering on the correct parts of the scene, and making compensations intelligently. A big advantage of a TTL meter over a handheld is that it automatically compensates for macro or some telephoto lenses, whose effective light transmission changes with distance from the subject or focal length. Also, polarizing filters. With a handheld one has to compensate for this by doing arithmetic, (ouch!). There are places where handheld meters are nice. Best are those that can work as flash meters. I very occasionally use an incident meter (with a big ping-pong ball on top), if the scene has real strange tone values. But I maybe only grab it because its in the bag already. Some of the very narror spot reflected meters, either TTL or handheld, can be nice, but really need to be expert at knowing where to point them. What is REALLY great about digital is the ability to make a test shot and see the results immediately!

Ya know people love to bring that point up about how you can see results immediately on a digital and for the most part it's true...but I cannot tell you how many times an image looked great on that teeny tiny microscopic lcd screen and when I finally got it onto my computer I was disappointed. Exposure which looked fine in camera, is not quite right, blurriness which wasn't visible before is now glaringly apparent, yada yada....the list is long. Misha brings up a good point about TTL metering...when you have any kind of filter on your lens, such as a polarizer, taking an incident meter reading means that you have to take into account the effect that will have on your exposure and correct it manually. Doing a reading thru the lens your camera will be automatically figuring in the difference in stops....less chance for exposure errors.

Me too, unless shutter speeds are the most important I always use Aperture Priority mode. It gives me control over my dof, and indirectly also over my shutterspeeds (changing the aperture means a different speed) :) But with Shutter Priority I can't control my aperture anymore. The idea with Spot metering and EA/L is that you can get readings away from the center of your photo. Say you shoot a photo of someone sitting in a large white room. If that person is not in the center of your photo, you'll never get him/her well exposed. If you want him/her to be well exposed your spot meter on the person, press the AE/L and recompose your shot. Most cameras with matrix metering (or whatever it's called on non-Nikon cameras) will do a great job, but especially with slides it does make a difference, just like peterke says :) If a person is standing in front of a bright window, you can focus on the window, away from the person, and he/she will turn out completely black. Same with sunsets, it gives far more color and saturation, while normal metering might result in a photo with a dull looking sky - certainly not the sunset you saw yourself. Also Spot Metering is a nice substitute for a seperate light meter, when the things you want to shoot are too far away ;)

Michelle, you bring up a really good question!

If I'm telling you something you already know PLEASE PLEASE forgive me-

There's basically two different types of meters, reflective light meters and incident light meters.

The in-camera meter and the hand-held "spot" meters are both forms of reflected light meters. That is, they measure the amount of light that is reflected off a subject. If you are metering a black wall, you will be reading less light than if you are metering a white wall. As a result, your camera's going to respond differently (if it's in automatic mode). The more light it measures, the more it will want to "stop down" or increase the F-stop to reduce the amount of light hitting the film/CCD. The less light it measures, the more it will "open up" and let more light into the film/CCD. (I'm using these terms very loosely to give you the general idea, but the mechanics depend on the camera type/mode, etc.)

That said, a really good in-camera reflective light meter can make your life a lot easier. 80-90% of the time you might be getting the exposure that you really want.

Incident light meters are hand-held meters which measure the amount of light that is hitting the subject. The key difference is that the incident meter measures the light from the position of the subject. So if you are measuring your scene, and you've got a person standing in front of a black wall facing the camera, you walk up to the person, hold the meter to their nose, pointing the white half-dome toward the camera. Because you're reading the light hitting the subject and not the light reflecting off of the subject, it doesn't matter whether or not you're in front of a white wall or black wall, or the subject has dark skin, or even if there's a huge spotlight behind their head pointed right at the camera. The incident meter will always give you a reading to properly expose the subject from that exact location you are metering.

That's basically how it works. If you want to produce accurate tones - and have control over the tones in the frame, then I would recommend an incident meter. Just depends on what your goal is.

But There are ways to simulate an incident reading by using a "gray card" - which is a gray . . . card which reflects 18% percent of the light which strikes it. If you place this card in front of the subject and fill the frame, your in-camera meter will expose the film so that it matches the 18% gray level. If you are taking photographs with an in-camera meter, you would first meter the subject (by zooming in?) so that the gray card fills the frame, hold that exposure, remove the gray card and take the picture. This is slightly laborious and not always the same as using an incident meter, but you get similar results.

One thing to remember, is that if you are using negative film (as opposed to slides) and having prints made by a 1-hour lab, the machines they use will automatically re-expose the image for the print. So all your meticuous work using the incident meter and/or gray card gets washed out by a machine. Professional labs will be able to make prints to your specifications - a color contact sheet is a great way to obtain a "1-lite" print of all the images in your roll. I use negative motion picture film and have it processed at RGB Labs in Los Angeles, to produce slides. Seattle Filmworks also does this, as do a few other labs around the country. With slides from negatives, the lab's equipment uses "RGB timing lights" to expose the slide. RGB stands for red, green, blue. The levels of all the lights together determine how light or dark the slide will be. Individually, the lights can be used to adjust the "color balance" of your image. You probably know that day-light is slightly bluer than indoor, incandescent light. This has to do with color temperature. Basically, this is how motion picture film is processed, color adjusted and printed. If you are trying to achieve precise tones in your image and you also want to have control over color balance, then this is ultimately your best route. I'm speaking from a motion picture perspective here, and perhaps portrait photographers will have a different opinion. Maybe a slide isn't what you want to end up with. All of these options depend on what your goals are, and how you want to use your images.

If you are taking digital images, you still can achieve some degree of control by using the gray card. For each new "scene" or "set-up", I would recommend first taking a picture of a gray card in front of the subject. The gray card should be large in the frame, but it's good to have skin tones too (if your subject is a person). You will need to use the same exposure for each photo of that given set-up. That way, when you take your hi-resolution image into photoshop, you can balance the light levels to the 18% gray card of the first image of each set-up.

Accurate color balancing, which is especially critical with digital photography, can be achieved by using a "color chart/gray card" combo. If you balance the colors from the color chart to reference values, and apply this color balance to all of the images for this given set-up, chances are you'll get consistent and "accurate" color for each of the shots. There's a whole process of calibrating color digitally, from the original photograph to the color values which show up on your computer monitor (to even what you have printed at a professional print house). I'm not experienced enough to give you the details or best advice as to how to do this.

This is probably more than you really wanted to know. I hope it helps!

in one sense I prefer separate metering, basically cause that is what I learned with, only extremely expensive professional cameras had any sort of automatics, like autoadvance, to be able to shoot a roll with one press of the button. the real issue with separate metering, you are reading the meter from a different location and angle than the camera will be in for the picture. this means that the result is slightly skewed. ~g~ I grew up with a "shutterbug" for a father, with over 20 thousand in nikon equipment, back in the 70's. the best in camera meter was an analog pointer, to the left it was dark, to the right it was light, in the center the settings were perfect. hand held external metering was the only method available to get better information. but in some situations that 7" difference in location made a tremendous impact on the final image.

hmm... That's interesting, 'Chelle. It would be fairly easy to add a feature to a digital camera that would highlight areas in the display that are "overexposed" or "underexposed." I'm thinking a display similar to the "out of gamut" display in Photoshop. Actually, in cameras with the LCD viewfinder one could display this before even snapping the shot... Could also display a histogram, and give adjustment curves similar to those used on scanners, but unclear who would really mess with this. It's not really necessary to get the perfect exposure in the camera; only necessary not to over or underexpose something important. Focus is more difficult to deal with. Could zoom and scroll the display, either before or after, but that seems like a pain in the field. Wonder if any camera manufacturers are listening?

I only have a digital camera and all this light metering stuff is new to me, but I am learing quick. "blurriness which wasn't visible before is now glaringly apparent", yes I know all about that. The only thing I do, is take lots of pictures with different settings without really moving my position and go through them all and pick the good one on my computer. I have evaluative and spot metering on my canon, but I always use evaluative.

Oh yes, Michelle, I know what you mean. You're using the Dimage 7, right? I've had a fair amount of pictures that just looked fine on the LCD (and EVF), even when magnified. But then, on the computer screen you see that this slight blur. Lots of it has to do with the fact that the Dimage doesn't make you think twice about using that 200mm (250mm) zoom. A little handshake, just a tiny bit, and we're off. Lately, I've been using a lightweight aluminium tripod and a "not-so-lightweight" Manfrotto monopod; especially when i see (after spotmetering in-camera), that the shutterspeed will drop below the famous "1/1 -ratio". In other words, when the shutter speed drops below 1/200 sec, i won't be using the camera without the tri- or monopod with the zoom at 200mm. My minimum is around 1/40 at 35mm; below that, a monopod becomes really necessary. I used that principle during my last shoots and it works beautifully !

my camera's light meter is brokem, so i dont have a lot of choice :) besides, im so used to using it now i can be very, very quick. for filters, i just put the over the end of the light-meter when using them - not 100% perfect in theory, but works fine in practice, or i think so anyway. one of these days, ill get round to uploading some of my photos and let you judge for yourselves...

Excellent information from Visceral, it's appreciated! And yup peterke it's the Dimage 7, which is still not back yet, ughh. But yes I've had finally started lugging my tripod around, which I absolutely hate doing, cause I'm lazy. I've been shooting alot of film since the Dimage got a booboo and I'd hate to waste money on blurry images that I have to pay for....so out came the tripod, and it has made a big difference.

Hah. I have an old camera so most of the stuff here doesn't apply to me. ;-) hee hee hee The gray card thingy is right on the spot though. Thanks Visceral! :-) (*

Hi guys, here is my 2 bit's. I used to carry around way too much useless things like, light meters, multi reflectors, 6 lenses, way too many filters, and film... (I love digital...) But I found that out of all of the things I caried, I only used a few of them. My meter never left the case because I always used the one on my camara, it was easeyer and faster. I also prefer to do multiple spot meters and do the math for the expoture. Photography is an expencive hobby or job, but it usualy becomes so when you start buying all of the toys. Now I have 3 lenses a 17 to 35 mm, a 28 to 200 mm, and a 60 macro, a Metz flash, one colapsable reflector, a few filters, & my memory cards. I don't need anything more. The light meter on your camara has always been right on when I did it right, and in over 50,000 images I never felt the need to use the meter. (a few hundred buck down the tubes) Use what you need, and leave the rest out, simplisity in my expiriance makes for a better image. -Gabe-

ups sorry cal, I didn't realise you were still loged on my system... -Gabe-