Light meters are they a waste of time?

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rigsby1208

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Hi
I've got my own studio set up, with couple of softboxes, umbrella etc. Will getting a light meter really help much? I tend to shoot in manual and just set the studio lights on about mid power and then adjust the camera aperture in manual mode until the images look right in camera. If I need to adjusting the power on the studio lights if I need a particular aperture setting.
will the light meter really make a big difference? surely it all depends what look you are going for anyway, eg dark and moody, high key etc??
 
You are going about it all the wrong way. Aperture is one of the really important decisions in good portraiture - so lights are adjusted to meet chosen aperture.

Lighting styles are governed by lighting ratios, however those are just starting points.

Quick and easy setting of light levels is much easier with a light meter and it makes everything easily repeatable.

Please do not listen to the flashing blinkies fanatics and others that THINK you can gauge it on the back of the camera. Rarely if ever will you see an experienced professional photographer working without one. Personally I have had studio lights for close to 20 years and although I can set to a basic level without a meter I actually have 2 with me.

Over to you.

Mike
 
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I agree. Decide how much depth of field you want, set the appropriate aperture then adjust flash power/positions to suit.


Steve.
 
Yes I understand and I do generally update the light power when the depth of field required for the shot dictates it. Its really whether the light meter will take the shots to another level. I guess I need to learn more, particularly lighting ratios..any good instruction/youtube clips?
 
Agree about deciding aperture first and the value of a light meter. Getting the exposure right seems to take half the time with a meter. I wouldn't be without one now.
 
A meter is invaluable for setting up multiple lights. Using ratios, if you know what you want, it will get you ball-park very quickly.

But just because the last portrait looked great with the hair light one stop up and the background light two stops down, that's no guarantee it'll work for everything even when the effect you want is similar. Different hair styles and colours need different amounts of light, different backgrounds or feathering effects need different power settings, etc etc.

The best way to judge that is to have a decent quality LCD screen and see what it looks like. That shows an actual image, the interplay of highlights and shadows, cosine law relections and textures that the meter knows nothing about.

There are other variables too, that happen after the light enters the lens, that the meter cannot take any account of. It canot take account of actual lens transmission, or vignetting effects, or aperture inaccuracy, it doesn't know what reference tone the camera is calibrated to, and is no help with optimised exposure technqiues like ETTR. So in terms of final exposure setting, the histogram with blinkies enabled is a more reliable guide.

I'm a professional, I have a meter, but rarely use it. I work with quite a few other professionals too, and I can't remember the last time I saw one of them using a meter either. A light meter is a tool, sometimes a very useful one, but not the only one. A prudent professional uses whatever tool best suits the task in hand.
 
rigsby1208 said:
Hi
I've got my own studio set up, with couple of softboxes, umbrella etc. Will getting a light meter really help much? I tend to shoot in manual and just set the studio lights on about mid power and then adjust the camera aperture in manual mode until the images look right in camera.
Click to expand...


Is that how you would work outside on location? Just twiddle the aperture until it looks right? No... you'd use the camera's meter. You COULD just twiddle the aperture until it looks right, but you don't because it's actually more of a pain in the ass.

The fact is, you may need a specific aperture to blur a background... or maybe to ensure that the background and foreground are sharp. How can you do that if you have to set your aperture to a fixed amount of light? The idea in a studio is that the lights are under your control, and if you need to shoot at f5.6, you adjust the lights to give you f5.6... and you judge the power required by taking a light reading.

This becomes even more important when using more than one light.
 
I am at a similar stage as I wish to start shooting indoors with some basic studio lights I have acquired.
I use a Fuji X100 so nothing could be more simple than adjusting the aperture until it looks right as its on the lens and doing this with natural light has been good!
I would like to learn and play around with a few settings to blur the background by using aperture though so any advice would be much appreciated.
Are there any recommendations for budget light meters too please?
 
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