How many people use spot meters versus incident/reflected?

How many people use spot meters versus incident/reflected?

  • Spot Meter

    Votes: 47 16.1%

  • Incident/Reflected handheld

    Votes: 210 71.9%

  • incident/reflected camera mounted

    Votes: 41 14.0%

  • no meter - just guess

    Votes: 49 16.8%
  • Total voters
    292
teddy said:
I'm curious why you use incident for your slide film? Could you please elaborate a little more? Thanks! 🙂
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Chris has not been very active on this web site recently, but to answer your question, it is generally important when using reversal films not to overexpose the highlights as these lose detail abruptly, compared to negative films. A reflected light reading will return varying results according to the tonality and reflectivity of the surface being measured. Of course, these may still be used to meter transparency film with either a hand held meter, or a cameras built in reflective meter providing one is aware of this point. However the easiest way to quickly and accurately key in an exposure reading that will ensure highlight areas of one's subject are not overexposed, beyond the ability of the film to record them, is to take an incident reading of the ambient light falling on the subject.
Cheers,
Brett
 
Sarcophilus Harrisii said:
Chris has not been very active on this web site recently, but to answer your question, it is generally important when using reversal films not to overexpose the highlights as these lose detail abruptly, compared to negative films. A reflected light reading will return varying results according to the tonality and reflectivity of the surface being measured. Of course, these may still be used to meter transparency film with either a hand held meter, or a cameras built in reflective meter providing one is aware of this point. However the easiest way to quickly and accurately key in an exposure reading that will ensure highlight areas of one's subject are not overexposed, beyond the ability of the film to record them, is to take an incident reading of the ambient light falling on the subject.
Cheers,
Brett
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Is it possible to use incident metering with slide film and still overexpose, if the scene is very bright or reflective (white snow or bright beach sand in direct sunlight) ?
 
It depends on how far you are away from the area of snow for example. If you were standing in the middle of it I think it is likely that many incident meters would simply pick up the additional light being reflected from the snow and as a result the exposure would still be OK. On the other hand, if you were photographing a snow covered mountain from a distance and set your exposure with an incident reading from your location, it's possible highlights would be blown in the snow due to its additional reflectance.

It's interesting to note that this is the opposite of what would usually happen with a reflective reading, where, if it is not adjusted to compensate, the result will be at least a couple of stops of underexposure. The built in meter of most cameras, being calibrated for middle grey, are not intelligent. They do not "know" they are being pointed at a surface with much greater than average reflectance. They will simply return a suitable exposure for middle grey, which causes underexposure because the snow reflects much more light than middle grey and the light level is not as high as the light reflected off the show, at face value, would suggest.

Incident measurement is ideal for transparency film, however like any metering method, it is not 100% foolproof, 100% of the time. In these exceptionally bright situations, unless you are able to take your incident reading from a very close range to your principal point of interest in the scene, (or at least, in identical light conditions) you are probably better off taking a reflective reading from a middle tone in the same light conditions as the subject, and setting the exposure from that.
Cheers,
Brett
 
I do a rough and ready 'calibration' on my incident meter by pointing the dome at a clear summer sky and marking a 'maximum value' on the dial

Then when faced with a difficult exposure I can measure the sky and count back from there as a last resort

3376580392_f905271cd3_z.jpg
 
logan said:
I'm just curious, given the choices in meters - do you use a spot meter or a reflected/incident meter - and if so - is it mounted on the camera or not?

I guess in Ansel Adams book he advocates for using a spot meter - to use the zone system and/or a gray card effectively.
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I use what is appropriate. Distant scenery, spot. Quick and dirty, camera meter, studio, incident can not be better.

New Nikons have nice built in adjustable size spot, center weighted, average, and use an Expo Disk to make an incident.
 
I use my camera built in meters and they are more reliable. On M6 and M8 i don't worry about my meters. I do careful metering on the ambient light and make sure it is not towards the highlight . When I use my XPan -11 and Hasselblad 203Fe I don't bother as it's meter is very accurate .But exceptionally if my shooting is on snow i use my hand held meter which is minolta 1v which is easy to intergrade to the shooting. I use incident metering most of the time.
 
zauhar said:
What's the best spot meter for low light?

I recently shelled out a lot more than I should for a used Sekonic 758. It is a nice meter, but the spot mode reports 'underexposed' for areas that I would like to meter. I have the big spot attachment for my gossen lunasix, but it's reading drifts if the light intensity is too low.


Thanks!
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No handheld spot meters lower than EV 1. Not the Minolta Sptmeter F, nor either of the Pentaxes, or the Gossen Ultra Spot II. The Sekonic L-758 also meters to EV 1, according to the instructions, but mine gives me readings at slightly lower levels. I don't really think there is a better meter for what you want.
 
shimokita said:
Chris... do you create/use camera profiles uploaded to the Sekonic L-758, and if so any cautions or concerns when building / using light meter installed camera profiles.

Casey
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I did create a profile for my Canon 5DmkII. You can create individual profiles for a single ISO setting, or you can do a profile that covers multiple ISOs. To do the multi-ISO profile, you have to do the set of photographs of the profile target at each ISO, and load them in the software telling it what ISO you used for each set. You don't have to do it for every ISO setting the camera offers, it can interpolate for in-between settings. I usually use my camera at either 100, 400, or 1600, so I profiled it at those ISOs.

On my 5DmkII, the profiles I created gave about the same exposure as the default settings at ISOs 100 and 400, and it gave 2/10 of a stop more exposure than the default at the 1600 setting, which indicates the camera's true ISO at the 1600 setting is a little lower. Exposures are accurate.

The neat thing with the profiles is the dynamic range indicators. My camera's dynamic range came out to be much more in the dark tones than the default, and a little more on the light tones. This makes exposing in really difficult light easy, because I can check to see if a bright sky or light coming through a window will blow out the highlights.

I think its improved my digital camera exposure accuracy over the Minolta Flash Meter IV I used before.
 
Thank you very much Chris...
I appreciate the detail reply.

I have used a Sekonic L-758 for a couple of years,
Profiling seems to be a good next step for my work flow.

Casey
 
shimokita said:
Thank you very much Chris...
I appreciate the detail reply.

I have used a Sekonic L-758 for a couple of years,
Profiling seems to be a good next step for my work flow.

Casey
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Casey,

I forgot to mention that you should get the Sekonic Profile Target II to make your profiles. You can use an Xrite Colorchecker, and I tried it with that first, since I had a Colorchecker and didn't want to spend $130 for a profile target, but the profiles I made with the Sekonic target are more accurate.
 
I have used every kind of light meter known to man going back to the old Weston meters. But normally I shoot b&w and am pretty confident after 45 years in the trenches that I know where to put in the latrine -- so to speak. If I'm copying somebody's oil painting I'll use a meter but otherwise the meter is my strained brain, pretty much.
 
even if my camera has meter .. (digital or analog) .

I have habit to use spot meter ...
in pentax or integrated one in Gossen starlite

also have twin mate m, VC or Leica
but majority shot, I use spot meter

maybe just habit
 
Spot Meter 44 17.05%
Incident/Reflected handheld 184 71.32%
incident/reflected camera mounted 36 13.95%
no meter - just guess 44 17.05%
___________________________________________________
Total % 119,37 % ???? 😀
 
begona said:
Spot Meter 44 17.05%
Incident/Reflected handheld 184 71.32%
incident/reflected camera mounted 36 13.95%
no meter - just guess 44 17.05%
___________________________________________________
Total % 119,37 % ???? 😀
Click to expand...

one can tick several boxes, hypothetically you can get even 400%
 
If I am shooting in daylight, particularly with B&W film and with an old camera such as Leica or other vintage rangefinder, I do not use a meter. If the camera is a modern SLR with a reliable TTL meter I will certainly consider its opinion!

If I am shooting color, especially in unusual lighting, I'll often use a meter, lately a Voightlander camera mounted reflected light model, but also a Sekonic L28 (or similar) incident meter if there's enough light. I prefer incident metering if practical.
 
I use a sekonic l-518 incident meter, although it has an attachment to be used as a reflected meter as well. I use it as an incident 99.99% of the time.
 
logan said:
"How many people use spot meters versus incident/reflected?"

"What kind of meter do you use with your LTM?"
Click to expand...

The question should have been worded, "How many people use a spot metering pattern versus some other metering pattern such as averaging, center-weighted, or matrix?"

Incident and reflected light meters are the two most popular types of light meters.

Incident light meters, also called illumination meters, measure the amount of light coming from a light source. Incident light meters are good for studio work, close-up work, and uniformly illuminated subjects or scenes.

Reflected light meters, also called brightness meters, measure the amount of light coming from a subject. Reflected light meters are good for distant scenes (such as landscapes), scenes that include a light source (such as scenes that include the sun or street lights), subjects that are light sources (such as the moon or a sunlit stained glass window), subjects that are unapproachable (such as a wild animal), and subjects or scenes that are not uniformly illuminated (such as stage performers lit by spot lights).

The light meters built into most modern cameras are reflected light meters. These built-in reflected light meters offer a choice of different metering patterns.

a. Averaging—measures the entire scene

b. Spot—measures a small area of the scene (usually a 1º to 5º angle-of-view)

c. Center Partial—measures only the central portion of the scene

d. Center Weighted Averaging—measures the entire scene but emphasizes the central portion of the scene

e. Bottom Weighted Averaging—measures the entire scene but emphasizes the lower portion of the scene

f. Multiple Spot Averaging—measures and averages a number of spot readings from different portions of the scene. Some cameras may average as few as three spot reading to more than fifty.

g. Multiple Zone Averaging (also called Multiple Pattern Averaging, Honeycomb Pattern, Evaluative Metering, Multi-Segmented, Matrix Metering, Multi, Zone, and Evaluative)—evaluates and averages multiple readings of different portions of the scene


Hand-held light meters may be incident and/or reflected light meters. Those that are reflected light meters most likely use averaging, spot, or multiple spot metering patterns.

So, in answer to the questions in this old thread, for my cameras that offer spot, center-weighted, or multiple zone, I usually select multiple zone. For those that offer spot, center-weighted, or averaging, I usually select center-weighted. For those that do not have a built-in light meter, I usually use a handheld reflective light meter when shooting outdoors. When shooting under studio conditions, I usually use a handheld incident light meter because I do not want my meter reading to be influenced by the color of the subject and/or background.

The only time I use a spot meter is when I am shooting theatre and cannot jump up on the stage and take an incident reading while standing next to the performer.

By the way, what is an "LTM?"


Light Meters by Narsuitus, on Flickr
 
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