Saturday, March 15, 2008
Hand-held or in-camera meter?
Just returned from my PhoArts group meeting. It's an invitation-only group of serious photographers (say the name quickly and you'll learn a little more about us). The topic of in-camera reflective metering vs. hand-held incident metering came up and a lively discussion ensued.
We all agreed the current crop of digital D-SLRs and even some point and shoots have very good reflective meters that will do a good job under most conditions. But there are some conditions that can cause poor exposures when using them. For example, when everything in the viewfinder is very dark or very light, the reflective meter will try to render them as 18% grey (gray?). Or if shooting into a gorgeous sunset with an object in the foreground, that object will be rendered as a black silhouette. But if an incident meter is used to measure the light falling onto the subject (vs. being reflected back to the camera), you will get a much more acceptable exposure.
So for all you shooters who have "retired" your hand-held incident meters, put them back in your bag and use them when conditions are appropriate!
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2 comments:
Steve,
I aggree with everything you said and add the following comments. No light meter is perfect in all situations and for all purposes. It true what you way about reflective light meters. There are situations that they simply can't handle. You named a couple of them.
There are also situations where an incident light meter won't work either. I would suggest the sunset scenario. If you point the incident meter toward the setting sun you'll get one reading and another if you point it away from the sun. Which is the correct reading.
In the digital age I rely on my histogram. And that doesn't always work either but I get a much better idea of how good of an exposure I have.
But if your histogram is strictly luminance, it may look as though you have no clipping but you can still have clipping in one of the color channels and still end up with an exposure that is not entirely satisfactory. So a color channel histogram is the best.
That leads to other problems like simultaneously blowing hour shadows AND highlights which is another topic altogether.
I have some postings on these topics:
http://ralphnordstromphotography.com/wordpress/category/articles/how-to-articles/
You write very well.
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