How often do you use a light meter

How often do you use a light meter

  • All/most of the time

    Votes: 162 44.5%

  • more than half of the time

    Votes: 68 18.7%

  • half of the time

    Votes: 34 9.3%

  • less than half of the time

    Votes: 47 12.9%

  • almost never

    Votes: 53 14.6%
  • Total voters
    364
I agree with Chris Crawford on this one. I used to shoot all chromes with very narrow latitude and exposures had to be spot on. With B&W film I meter every time the lighting situation changes or the subject changes. Again I like to have good detail in shadows and bright tones. I get the best results that way. I either use the meter in the camera or a handheld incident meter. Jim
 
Sparrow said:
... only when I need to, but there's no option for that
Click to expand...

Same here. When the light changes frequently, like indoors shooting, I'll use it all the time. Or with formal portraits.
But walk-about photography on an overcast day I just take a light reading at the beginning of my walk and adjust for open and shade lighting based on experience. I want to enjoy the photography as much as possible, and fiddling with a light meter is not enjoyable to me. Looking through the finder IS enjoyable, catching those moments that might make it to print.
 
With a metered camera, always and I adjust based on the zone I think the main subject is in. With non-meter camera, I estimate, use another camera's meter, and lately I'm trying to figure out how accurate an old GE PR-1 is.
 
Sunny 16 (or often, 11 around here) for simple sunny days. The degree I'd overcast can be hard for mento eyeball so I usually meter at the start and on condition changes after. Evening Ive learned I cant estimate well either though I'm still working on that. Night is usually as wide open and fast as I can get. ;)
 
I realized that this is a flawed poll. It would have been more meaningful if I had asked "Do you carry a handheld meter on your unreliable/unmetered camera?"

My cameras don't have meters, but If I had a reliable built-in meter, then I might as well use it if I'm not carrying a handheld. I paid for it.
 
I usually take one reading in the shades and one in the sun, then remember those settings until it gets darker. When I'm in a place with inconsistent lighting I meter more often, but seldom before every shot. I like to be able to lift my camera to my eye and instantly make the picture, and I would rather make the picture I wanted to make and have it be one or two stops over/underexposed than have a perfect exposure of something I don't care about. If I primarily took pictures of stationary objects I would probably meter more often.

I sort of want to re-buy a Bessa R3M so I can use it in situations with inconsistent lighting, and then use my M2 and handheld in every other situation.
 
100% of the time. But part of my desire to move from AE to meterless Ms is to force myself to really respond to the light rather than rely on the meter and adjust from there.
 
All my 35mm cameras have built in meters, and most (except my FM) have some mode of auto exposure.
My Fuji GA645zi has a built in meter and auto exposure which is the only way I use it.
For all my other MF cameras including 6X9s I usually use my Pentax digital spot-meter. I sometimes use the built in meter in the Pentax 6x7, but I trust the Pentax spot-meter more.
 
Half of my work is flash portraits indoors so the distance is usually the same so every few weeks I'll do a meter reading at home for peace of mind. The other half I use a Voigtlander VC meter and sekonic 308s.
 
As of today, I'm taking the veil. No meter for five months. If I'm doing pretty well at that point, I'll leave the meter home when we go to France on April 14 for six weeks. If not, well, it was worth a try...
 
Never when using an unmetered camera. with either my M4 or my Nikon F, I go out and shoot. If you can't figure out basic exposure after 45 years and 500,000 negatives, you should probably buy a P&S and call it a day.
 
I voted wrong.. I thought the question meant 'external' light meter, so I voted for almost never, but in reality my answer should've been always since I always meter with internal meters, and use my external for my one camera that doesn't have a meter.
 
When I use my meterless cameras I use my iphone, it is always on me and has a very decent meter, however I don't meter for every shot.

If my camera has an internal meter I always use it in A priority.

I find metering on manual cameras like M6 distracting, it kinda slows you down. AE on Leica M7 makes more sense to me.
 
Does TTL metering count? All my systems have TTL, and that's all I use. I don't own an external meter.

Is there a big advantage in using a handheld?
 
Depends.

With a meterless camera like my M3 I'll use a handheld incident meter (a sekonic twinmate) to meter when I'm faced with a new scene/ when the lighting changes. In fact, even with 35mm film cameras with meters, I use an incident meter rather than the internal meter. With medium format (and a tlr, in my case), where the shooting tends to be slower, I'm tempted to use a spot meter to ensure I have good shadow detail, but to be honest almost always end up using the same little sekonic incident meter, and in the same fashion I do with 35mm.

With digital (and AE), I always use the internal meter, doublechecking on the lcd to see if the exposure is ok. This habit has been mainly due to the tighter dynamic range latitude of dslrs when I first started shooting about 6/ 7 years ago, but to be honest now, I find the dynamic range of digital slrs much improved since then, and am tempted now to revert to incident metering, something which would not have been feasible before the last generation or two of digital cameras for me.

When I do incident meter, I find the settings rarely change, and often feel lazy for not just learning general exposure settings in outdoor situations. Indoors is a different matter, and since I shoot indoors quite a bit, I do want to pay more attention so as to be able to discern the usual range of indoor situations, which for my casual indoor shooting tends to fall in about a 3 stop range. Also, I tend to sympathise with the comment on night shooting, where you're already at the margins, handheld with a fast lens, so why meter when there is nothing you can really do (except process in diafine, which is my secret weapon for rolls shot at night).
 
I use the "palm reading" method because is cool and I never had doubts how to expose a scene even in low light. Saying this, I would use light meter if I had one.
 
Almost all my cameras have meters and so I use them and most of the time I'm happy to do that. When shooting the FED2 I have been known not to check the meter with every shot and I have found that it works ok for me as usually the light hasn't changed much between shots.
Plan to shoot chromes in my new [to me] Yashica 124G and you can bet I will be metering the hell out of the scene to ensure I get the image I want.
 
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