light meters,anyone?

Red Bull

I'm in Photography right now in school and I would like to know about buying one of those little light meters that you hold out. I am using a Pentax K1000 with B&W film and I'm not sure if it is just me, or if my camera light meter is messed up, becasue every time I develop the negatives, they seem to have the wrong exposure. On most photos I have been getting the needle in the center. Maybe it's just some other type of error I'm making.

Either way, I would still like to learn about seperate light meters. Are they more accurate? Are they any challenge to learn to use? What's the avantage of them. I would like to buy one and learn how to use it, but I don't need an expensive one. Any help is appreciated.

ian408

Some say that the hand held meter is more accurate than an in-camera
meter.

You might argue that the lens affects the meter's sensitivity. It's true
that the angle of the area measuured changes with the lens while the
hand-held's does not. It's still 1 degree (where the lens might yield a
15 degree). If you're trying to very accurately spot meter something,
then the hand-held wins.

A hand held meter also allows you to meter a number of different places and
average them (some in-camera meters allow you to do this as well).

Sekonic and Minolta make some nice meters. I have a Sekonic that does
both Reflected and incident measurement. I'm still learning to use it but I can
see the difference occassionally.

Hope that helps.

Ian

colourbox

I have no experience with hand-held meters, but I am a long-time K1000 owner and its light meter is quite generalized, and you have to get used to how it works. Unlike the computer-driven scene-analyzing metering systems on today's cameras, the K1000's meter is more like a basic averaging meter. The only thing you know when the meter needle is in the middle, is that the overall light level is OK. That doesn't necessarily tell you if the light level at the subject is OK. A hand-held meter can measure a more specific area, and should be a good complement to the camera's general meter by being a useful reality check.

If you have a scene that has long range from light to dark, and your subject isn't in the middle of the range, the K1000 meter can be misleading. For example, backlit subjects - the K1000 will more or less average* out the light it senses across the whole frame, and so when you shoot a subject backlit by the sun, when the meter needle is in the middle the subject may actually be underexposed, because the extreme level of sunlight skews the average reading upwards. Yet the extreme level of sunlight isn't lighting up the side of the subject facing you. In a dark theater, the situation is the opposite: The meter will come up with a whole-scene average that's dark, but when you take the shot the actors may be overexposed because the actual amount of light on them is OK due to the spotlights focused on a relatively small area of the frame.

Some of my friends have experienced me shoving the K1000 right up to their face before backing off for the shot because I was trying to make sure I was getting a camera meter reading off of the actual area of interest in the photo. If I had used a hand-held spot meter I wouldn't need to do that.

As far as whether your meter is messed up, here are the tests I used. Put the lens cap on, then point the camera at a light source and pull the cap off. The meter needle should jump from the bottom to the middle or top. If it stays at the bottom even when pointed at light, the battery may be dead. The meter always runs when it senses light, so if you leave the camera sitting around without a lens cap, the meter will run down the battery. I figure as long as the meter needle goes up and down when I turn the aperture and shutter speed controls, it's OK.

*I could be wrong on this, the meter might be center-weighted, I don't remember

Blurmore

How to make yourself look like a dork or a pro
I use a Minolta Vf flash meter here is an article http://www.popphoto.com/article.asp?print_page=y&section_id=3&article_id=732&page_number=1&preview==
comparing it to another meter I have used that a friend owns.

Both meters the Minolta Vf and the Sekonic L-358 are excellent and accurate meters. They both read ambient and flash (with or without cord) the Sekonic has the added feature of working with Pocket Wizard wireless slaves. Both will also give a flash/ambient mix readout, however the Vf's is in a rudimentry pie graph layout and the Sekonics in a nice hard percentage. I've used this feature only to see how it works. The sekonic is a great meter, but it has more bells and whistles than I will ever use. Like the ability to hold in memory 2 iso's. If I hand my meter to an assitant, I want the simplest meter I can get, not one with a 'feature' which could allow him to meter my 400 speed film for iso 80 at the touch of a button. The 5 degree spot meter attachment for the Vf is indispensable for metering a backlit grey sky on an cloudy day, or a lighting effect projected over a stairway, or even the bottom of a bride's dress at the front of a church. I believe the Sekonic also has this attachment. So far as incident or reflected, I only use mine as an incident, or with the spot attachment, the applications for reflected light in portraiture are limited, and the proper technique for reflected light metering is more art than science.


So what can a meter do for you? Well one great thing it can do is allow you to fully use the exposure lattitude of the film you are shooting. For instance if you shoot Fuji NPH 400 or Kodak Portra 400 NC (or any 400 speed film to a point) you have a 4 stop range of exposure. Meaning you can miss the 'correct' exposure by 2 stops over or 2 stops under and still have a decent exposure. So lets say you 'rate' the film at iso 320 in the meter, you would then be exposing the film for the 'sweet spot' of the exposure range, and metering the scene with the more accurate incident meter will ensure that you avoid disastourous over exposure and losing highlights. I've worked with people who rate 400 as low as 220. 100 speed film which has very little lattitude can be rated safely at 80 for flash exposures that really 'pop'.
Both of these meters can also average, so you meter a highlight, meter a shadow, press a button and get the average (which isn't too hard to do in your head, but if you want to meter MORE than 2 the math gets tricky) I think the Sekonic will allow a larger number of values to be averaged, this is once again something of limited use for still photography. The Vf also allows highlight or shadow bias metering, I have never used this.

In camera meters use reflected light, and in camera meters can be easily fooled. My use of a hand held light meter is more neccesity than preference. The medium format cameras I use for weddings do not have in camera meters. Though metering prisms are made the ones I have come across are less accurate than even crude 35mm in camera meters. Add in the fact that most do not support TTL flash metering, and 95% of my shots at a wedding involve flash, and you can see why a hand held meter is indispensable.
I do not use a meter with my digital equipment, I know people who do, but I think it is a waste of time so long as the camera has a histogram readout, and your eyes for LCD display are good.

The Sekonic Digilite 318-B is also a great/simple meter http://www.sekonic.com/Products/L-318.html
if you can find one. My friend who has the Sekonic L-358 had the 318-B untill he left it on top of his car while shooting bridal party portraits outdoors in the DC area during the height of the sniper shootings. OOPS.


http://www.qtm.com/Home/manuals/p3.htm

I've also used one of these with the wheel thing, it gives a numerical readout (EV I guess) which you then convert to Fstop and time using the wheels for a given ISO, too much math for me.

gtc

light meters,anyone?
i am looking into light meters and was wondering who in here uses one?

i need to know the ins and outs of light meter purchasing.i need it mainly for my 1964 Pentax Spotmatic,which i love,but which has too basic a meter.

i have been looking at the Gossen DigiSix as a secondhand purchase but was wondering whether there may be a cheaper,perhaps older ,alternative which would do much the same?

ian408

Hiya Greg!

Merged this one with one from a few lines down.

Ian