Diomedes
Vjekoslav Bobić
Very simple ... 🙂
How to take readings with a hand-held meter?
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oftheherd
Veteran
In my experience, I rather prefer incident to reflected. Incident as has been stated, is measuring the light hitting the scene, not reflecting from it. That seems to work best most of the time. You should try to be where you subject is and point the dome of the incident meter towards the camera. I have often simply held the meter up high and faced it the way the back of the camera was facing, especially for distant scenics.
It is difficult to fault A. Adams and his Zone System for some nice photos. However, there are times when you need to compensate from what your meter has told you is best. That is true whether you are using reflected or incident. And that is a lot of what Ansel Adams was doing with his Zone System. He just made it into a system which meant you could be a little more consistant with your results. You could also be slower. And Zone doesn't really work well with roll film if you also want to control for development.
My suggestion is that if you have a meter that does both, or just two meters, experiment. We all have preferences as to how we like our photos to look. You know what you prefer, I don't. And only you know what in a scene is most important to you. After you have experimented some, you will know what you prefer and when.
Funny thing is for those cameras I own that have TTL metering, I normally accept what the camera tells me, and usually get good photos. But sometimes I make adjustments. When I use cameras that don't have it, I tend to like reflected with my Gossen Luna Pro, and incident with the Luna Pro SBC. And if I am using my Sekonic L28c2, I much prefer results from incident. Go figure. As I said, experiment and see what gives you what you like. But you probably already knew that.
It is difficult to fault A. Adams and his Zone System for some nice photos. However, there are times when you need to compensate from what your meter has told you is best. That is true whether you are using reflected or incident. And that is a lot of what Ansel Adams was doing with his Zone System. He just made it into a system which meant you could be a little more consistant with your results. You could also be slower. And Zone doesn't really work well with roll film if you also want to control for development.
My suggestion is that if you have a meter that does both, or just two meters, experiment. We all have preferences as to how we like our photos to look. You know what you prefer, I don't. And only you know what in a scene is most important to you. After you have experimented some, you will know what you prefer and when.
Funny thing is for those cameras I own that have TTL metering, I normally accept what the camera tells me, and usually get good photos. But sometimes I make adjustments. When I use cameras that don't have it, I tend to like reflected with my Gossen Luna Pro, and incident with the Luna Pro SBC. And if I am using my Sekonic L28c2, I much prefer results from incident. Go figure. As I said, experiment and see what gives you what you like. But you probably already knew that.
