Handheld light meter vs camera meter

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so54i88

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Do you use a handheld meter when out and about shooting even though the camera meter works perfectly? The reason I ask is I'm thinking to get a handheld incident meter. The meter in my M6 is very accurate but I tend to fiddle with the camera meter too much as I have a tendency to try and light up both arrows in the viewfinder before willing to press the shutter! So I thought I'd take batteries out of the camera and use the handheld to take a reading, set the exposure on the camera and forget about it until light changes. I feel it's also easier/quicker to adjust settings when not looking through the finder. Does anyone work this way? If so, what would be a good basic meter to get?
 
so54i88 said:
Do you use a handheld meter when out and about shooting even though the camera meter works perfectly? The reason I ask is I'm thinking to get a handheld incident meter. The meter in my M6 is very accurate but I tend to fiddle with the camera meter too much as I have a tendency to try and light up both arrows in the viewfinder before willing to press the shutter! So I thought I'd take batteries out of the camera and use the handheld to take a reading, set the exposure on the camera and forget about it until light changes. I feel it's also easier/quicker to adjust settings when not looking through the finder. Does anyone work this way? If so, what would be a good basic meter to get?
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You can give it a try without buying a handheld meter. meter the scene with the M6 meter, then ignore the LEDs same as you plan on doing with an external meter. For me, it's hard to ignore the LEDs, so the solution was a meterless body, or a body with a meter that showed +/-1 and +/-2 setting as well as spot-on.
 
Yes, I tried that. 1. the LEDs are very distracting and; 2. I feel strange/odd metering the back of my hand in crowded area.
 
I think most of the times the kind of precision you seem to chase is absolutely not necessary and when it is probably having one or two leds lighted is not really relevant. With film I normally measure the scene once either with a hand held meter or with the camera's meter mostly to see how many stops difference there are between the darkest and the brightest areas I'd like not to be pure black and pure white and if there are just a few stops difference I stop worring and take pictures. For portraits I use a incident meter. Also, despite all the super gadged available I am used to hand held meter when setting flashes... With digital in natural light I don't use a meter. I guess the answer to your questio is: yes I use a hand held meter and a good one.

GLF
 
I use a pentax spotmeter, works extremely well for zone system work, especially for landscape and portraits. But for fast light changing street photography, it is preferable to use built-in meter.
 
Cheers guy. Seems everyone has their own way of shooting. I think I will give handheld meter a try. I have a Pentax spot meter too but it's a bit difficult for street. Sekonic l308s seems a nice little meter.
 
One problem for street I found with the M6 was the need to see in the viewfinder to get the meter reading. The M9 allows you to meter without bringing the camera to the eye by pressing the INFO button when shutter dial is set to A. I like a hand held, but the M6 meter is so good and metering my hand, which I did a lot, hardly ever changed what the in-camera balanced LEDs told me. Learning to live with the LEDs and ignore them when appropriate took me a long time.
 
To me, buying a meter and knowing how to use it are two different exercises. Roger Hicks in his excellent book (with his wife) 'Perfect Exposure' carefully explains how to use a hand meter. One eye opener was that a camera meter and a hand meter may give different readings as camera meters (at least film cameras, I don't know about digital) are biased for transparencies. So be sure you learn how to use a hand meter.
 
I have used handheld meters from time to time. They are very useful when:

1) you want a quick average of all the light hitting a scene;
2) your subject is backlit in a way that is likely to confuse an in-camera meter;
3) your subject or its background contains lots of reflective surfaces (or is mostly white, or mostly black);
4) you want to measure flash or average flash and ambient light;
5) you want to work out the ratio between different light sources (background, subject, key lights, etc.);
6) your light is not going to change much (e.g. shooting outside on an overcast day).
7) your camera's metering batteries are dead;
8) you are using a camera without a meter.

I also find it helps me be deliberate about what I am measuring.

Ben

Edit: probably more important than whether you use a reflected in-camera meter or an incident handheld meter is knowing what the tool does and when it is being fooled.
 
An incident meter would be an excellent compliment to the onboard reflectance meter in your camera. I would suggest the Sekonic L398 ( Norwood ) which requires no battery; and with its old fashioned scales is an excellent teaching tool for exposure equivalences.
You will get into far less trouble with an incident meter.
 
If I have an accurate in-camera meter I am experienced at using, I seldom think to use a hand held meter. But there are times when they have an advantage. Incident meters are useful at times, as are meters like the Gossen Luna Pro sbc for really low light (if I don't have a camera with in-camera meter that also handles low light. But overall, I will use a good in-camera meter and like it.
 
I'll be honest and say that I have a sekonic 308 and i hardly use it. With manual cameras I tend to err on the side of over exposure. ie just light up both or centre for correct if not then the + side of things. I used to do this with the paddles and needles in the F2's also. With my Leicaflex I just meter for where I want as it's a pretty good spot meter. With the F5 in auto I have in all the time I have used it, not encountered a situation that it couldn't give me a usable negative.
I have probably used the Iphone meter more than the 308 when out with my M2.
 
I use hand held incident metering frequently. The meters are more sensitive than the I camera meters, typically, and there's no ambiguity as to what you are reading. Nce I get a baseline with the hand held, I usually tweak for m there based on experience and looking at the scene.

There's really little need to use the meter for every exposure if you use your eye and memory. Get a baseline, learn to see what that means to exposure.
 
Hand hels meter 80% of the time. And with slides 100%. The difference is sometimes several stops but the hand held meter has never let me down. Said it before, will repeat it ad nauseum, the best investment I ever made in photography was a Sekonic L-758D. Since then I don't trust an inbuild meter anymore. And with good reason.
 
I use a Sekonic L308s exactly as you have described. When I shoot a static subject, I take a reflected reading of the darkest shadow in which I want some detail and stop down from that reading three stops for zone 2. That usually works out well in average sunlit conditions. But most of the time I go with an incident reading over my shoulder.
 
Learn to shoot without a meter. It doesn't take long, and you really don't need one. Shooting ISO 100 at 1/125 in full sunny daylight use f/16. Overcast use f/11. Open shade f/8. Deep shade f/5.6. Learn to evaluate scenes by that scale. With a little practice you'll be able to evaluate pretty much any scene to within a half-stop indoors or out. Then you can start adding in ISO to the mix. The zone system is easy to use, and doesn't necessarily need a meter either.

That said, I generally use my camera's meter until I realize that it's outside it's design parameters for what I want to show, and then I open up or close down appropriately given the scene I'm shooting. Meters are good to have, but you need to be comfortable functioning without one. Remember that most films now have at least three stops latitude anyway before you get into real trouble. It doesn't need to be a perfect exposure to be a perfect image.
 
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