Which Sekonic for Landscapes

Excuse me for curiosity, but what exactly is wrong with camera's built in meter? If you have to be anal about it, you can you spot meter to check the parts of the scene and then make your decisions. Unless you use Large format I can't see the need for one (and even then you can use 5D for that).

Light meters are good for studio and strobist lighting. I think L-358 is a decent one.

Incident light meter is used to measure the light falling on the subject. This is good for studio and very bad for landscapes. Again your 5D has the best one.
 
What do you want to achieve with a hand held meter? Presumably optimum exposure?

The best way to do that is to use the histogram, with blinkies enabled. If you set up your camera pre-sets properly, it is by far the most accurate way.

NB You can use an incident reading for landscapes just fine. In fact that's what I'd use in preference to anything except maybe a very narrow angle spot meter.
 
HoppyUK said:
NB You can use an incident reading for landscapes just fine. In fact that's what I'd use in preference to anything except maybe a very narrow angle spot meter.
Click to expand...

Really? How about shadows and well lit up areas? I guess you could then also just guess it or use centre-weighted average with better results.
 
daugirdas said:
Really? How about shadows and well lit up areas? I guess you could then also just guess it or use centre-weighted average with better results.
Click to expand...

That's when I might prefer a spot meter, basically to check the dynamic range and to see what's what, but apart from that I honestly can't think of an occasion where any sort of reflected reading would be better than incident (unless of course you cannot physically get yourself in into the right position to take an incident reading).

A regular reflected reading with a hand meter is nothing more than a rather crude average reading, such as you get with the most basic in-camera metering.

This is the way to get optimum exposure: set up your camera defaults so that you know exactly how much headroom you've got on the histogram - the contrast setting in particular has quite a big impact on this. Shoot raw and fire off a test pic. Then adjust the exposure so that all the important tones are as far to the right of the histogram as you dare put them, without clipping any detail you need to retain (blinkies are very helpful with this). No exposure meter can tell you how far to push it - that is down to the individual subject and your personal judgement.

In this way you will maximise the tonal range recorded by the sensor. It might look a bit bright on the LCD, but you can bring it back down again in post processing and gain more detail in the shadows and mimimise noise.

Edit: That's basic 'Expose To The Right' technique. Good link here - no separate meter needed for this http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml
 
pragmatist said:
Which Sekonic light meter is good for landscape photography and do i need incident and spot?
Click to expand...

I have had a Sekonic L508 for about 10 years and it's a very good piece of kit.
Mine gets used when I do LF work as well as DSLR / digital rangefinder work.
They do take some of the guesswork out of using graduated filters though other's comments about using the histogram to check the exposure are valid.
It's down to personal preference and working practice.

One advantage of having the meter is that you don't have to get your camera out to check out a scene that might be worth photographing as the meter is quite pocketable.

I think the closest equivalent to it nowadays is the L758DR which goes for about £439 at Warehouse express.
The beauty of these meters is that they handle both incident and spot metering. They also work as flash meters, so they are really versatile. They're not cheap though. Why not try to get hold of a secondhand meter?
 
A 1 degree spot meter would be the best tool for landscape. The spot meter in your camera is considerably wider than that. I'd choose a meter which does incident readings as well. On the 'buy it once' principle you might as well get one that does flash. :shrug:
 
FWIW I use a Sekonic L758D, admittedly I bought it when I was doing 5x4 film landscapes, and the spot feature was invaluable. Now I tend to use it more for complicated flash set ups. As a light meter for landscapes you can't fault it, but you have to ask yourself if you want to spend nearly £500 on a light meter :shrug:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top