Incidental Light Metering Question

[barry]

I just purchased a handheld meter with the option of incidental or reflected light. Under what circumstances would I switch the meter to "reflected" mode? If I were to take a nightime shot of a building which is only illuminated by interior lights? Anything that is radiating its' own light?
Other than that. Just so I understand correctly. When I use incidental metering, I aim the meter toward the light source.
Sorry if these questions are somewhat remedial. I have just never used an external meter before. I recently purchased a non-metered camera body and have found that I can achieve accurate results about 90% of the time by estimating exposure. It's that other 10% that makes me wary of winging it all the time. My success ratio for composition is fairly low as it stands. :bang: I would hate for a potential success to fall into failure due to erroneous exposure calculation.

 

[Nikon Bob]

You might find this of interest http://www.sekonic.com/IncidentVsReflect.html . I am sure that there are other sites.

Nikon Bob

 

[Mike Kovacs]

Ideally, when using an incident lightmeter, the reading should be taken from the subject position, pointing the meter towards the camera position.

As long as you are in the same light as your subject, you don't need to be in the subject position. E.g. a huge mountain vista. But if you are standing in shade and you subject is lit, your meter reading will be incorrect. I quite often walk around with my incident meter pointed over my shoulder to get a reading of what light is falling ahead of me.

 

[kmack]

No argument with anything Jenni posted.

There are a few individual tricks one can use. I do not use a spotmeter so I do averaging. The point to remember is as Jenni said, the meter will average out the scene and render a medium grey average. When using the meter in reflective mode, as the old saw goes, if you are shooting sand on the beach, or snow under bright sun, open up two stops. If your are metering a black statue, stop it down by two stops. Consider your subject and adjust your exposure, use the meter reading only as a starting point.

Another trick, if you are a white guy like me, the palm of your hand is about 1 stop open from average grey. Meaning that if you meter the palm of your hand and open up one stop you should get a good exposure.

 

[RayPA]

One thing ... I find using a handheld meter really makes you stop and think about your photography. This, to me, is a good thing 🙂

I agree, but would add: I've found that once you've learned how to use a handheld meter it'll make you stop and think about your photography. The meters in cameras are extremely handy and usually very good, especially if you don't ignore them and just rely on them to handle your exposures like a p&s does. Once you've learned how to use a handheld meter, camera meters are very useful.


🙂

 

[Nikon Bob]

Just a bit OT, but this question of how to use handheld meters comes up fairly regularly. It might be a good idea to have a sticky post with links on how to use one. We have one on how to load an LTM.

Nikon Bob