The advantage of using a light meter?

jhob

jhob

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For those of you that use lightmeters I'm interested to know why you do? What advantages does a lightmeter give over the metering provided by an SLR?

I can meter accurately for the scene or by spot metering using just the camera and I can't think of a good reason why I would ever choose to use a lightmeter.
 
Maybe one of the things we learn at CJ's workshop - I have bought one that may arrive over the next week or so, so am hoping to work out what to do with it...!
 
I am considering buying one, and if I do get one it would obviously make sense to do so before the workshop. However I'm unsure whether I would really make use of it day to day, if not there's little point in me buying one (unless it was really cheap).

I'm just interested to learn a little more about them so I can make this decision.
 
The spot meter in a digital SLR whilst extremely useful is usually around a 5 degree spot, whilst the spot in a better hand held meter is 1 degree which gives the ability to meter more accurately on a small part of the scene. This is particularly useful in say landscape work for metering on a small area of tone on those distant mountains.

Again the better ones will also meter for flash or ambient light or a mixture of both. Using the diffuser cone on a hand held meter and metering from the subject position is also the equivalent of metering on a grey card which can be extremely useful.

Once the camera is set up on a tripod, a hand held meter is far more convenient for taking readings from various parts of the scene/subject without continually mounting and unmounting the camera to use the camera meter.

Whilst you can certainly manage without one, I think a meter is a very useful tool for any photographer.
 
Thanks for the excellent explanation CT. It's really helped me understand light meter usage.

If I do choose to get onecan anyone recommend a simple and reasonably priced model, or at least what features I should be looking out for?
 
Have a look at this one - I owned one of these for years, it's beautifully made, does reflected and incident readings and will never need batteries. CLICK

I have a Sekonic L558 which is a fantastic digital meter, but costs a lot more money, although mine was a bargain 2nd hand.

In all honesty you don't have to spend anywhere near this sort of money if you don't want to. Look for a well made meter which does both reflected and incident readings. You could do worse than pick up a used Weston Master V - still an excellent meter even today.

If you want spot metering and all the other bells and whistles then you need to be looking at a newer digital meter. Check out Ffordes for their 2nd hand meters - I got mine from there.
 
Many Wedding pros use them to avoid the camera metering the white dress or black suit and getting the exposure wrong, you then need to set your camera to manual based on the meter reading

The added benefit is that for a similar range of shots i.e. the big group down to the littlest groups, as the exposure stays the same so do the skin tones and colour. When you move to a new area, metering in this way again maintains consistent tones that need no colour correction later - it just slows the photo process down a wee bit so 'Reportage' togs tend to use the camera's own meter instead

I never use one for landscapes though as if the exposure range is obviously wide, I'd rather just bracket
 
Turns out I do actually have a light meter, I just forgot about it because I have never used it, came with a job lot on ebay many years ago. It's a sekonic hanimex. Looks pretty ancient and I'm not sure it would be of any use today. All the dials and lines confuse me too!
 
rwotton said:
sorry excuse my ignorance, what do you mean by bracket?
Click to expand...

You take a number of exposures of the same scene at say -2/3EV, -1/3EV, 0EV, +1/3EV, +2/3EV. One of them will be 'more correct' than the others. Basically it's a bit like hedging your bets.
 
"hedging your bets" - nicely put:thumbs:

If done on a tripod too, you're half way there to using HDR techniques as well; so 'bracketing' is great for tricky lighting situations where the subject doesn't move or you actually want to HDR it
 
jhob said:
Turns out I do actually have a light meter, I just forgot about it because I have never used it, came with a job lot on ebay many years ago. It's a sekonic hanimex. Looks pretty ancient and I'm not sure it would be of any use today. All the dials and lines confuse me too!
Click to expand...

LOL. That's an old one but it might just surprise you. Check it against your camera meter.

They're all much the same in use...

First set the ASA speed which is exactly the same numeric scale as ISO and the same sensitivities.

When you take a reading you press a button and the needle deflects depending on the strength of the light it receives.

You then turn a dial to line up a pointer with the deflected needle position.

Doing the latter lines up two scales - one for shutter speed and one for aperture. You then just read off the shutter speeds and apertures which are adjacent to each other to give you the available choices of shutter speed/ aperture combination.

Hope that helps. Have a play, you'll soon see how it works.
 
I've figured out how it works now, I can see it might be useful for taking readings close to a subject.

How come most light meters are relatively quite expensive when the technology in them appears to be really quite simple?
 
99.99% of the time the meter in the camera will do the job perfectly - and you can check it on the spot. The big advantage of a meter is you can use it for incident light readings - i.e. light falling on the subject - whereas camera meters measure the light reflected by the subject (or part of it). Incident light readings are unaffected by the subject matter and theoretically much more accurate. However, as I said...99.99% of the time - you won't need it today...camera systems are sooo good.
 
jhob = damn good question!

Perhaps the simple answer is... because they can get away with it

Sometimes I think prices for 'Pro' gear (or what the manufacturer thinks only Pros will buy) is based on us reclaiming the VAT and offsetting against 40% tax-rate, which makes gear effectively half price?
 
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