My main metering technique is based on incident light readings, but it is much faster than fiddling around with the computer dial incorporated into every meter. It also involves a story about metering technology that may be of some interest in its own right.
When uncertain of the light level, I usually use a variant of incident light metering that I developed when I was a working photojournalist 35 years ago. I used a Gossen Luna Pro meter. When metering, its needle pointed to a number which one then entered onto the usual dial computer which then showed the f-stop/speed pairs associated with the ISO and the measured number. The needle pointed to 20 for sunny, 17 for shade, and 12 or so for the standard indoor levels that Harry has already mentioned. Since I regarded the dial as too slow, I quit using it and learned to do my own mental calculations based on the Luna Pro measurements and on Sunny-16. For examples: Gossen 20 = f/16 at 1/ISO; Gossen 17 = f/5.6 at 1/ISO; Gossen 12 = f/2.8 at (1/60 for ISO 400). etc. Many times I could simply eyeball the light level to get the Gossen number with sufficient accuracy and proceed from there. When uncertain, I would measure with the Luna Pro, mentally retrieve a pair of settings and then make any fine adjustments that each instance required. I found, with practice, that this method was very fast and worked for both BW and color
Later I took up other work, and for some 30 years I didn't make many photos. When I started photographing regularly again a few years ago, I pulled out my Luna Pro and tried to use it. Surprisingly, its readings didn't agree with the light meter I still carried in my head or with the ones from the reflected light meters in my cameras. I changed batteries and recalibrated and tried everything I could think of, to no avail.
Eventually I figured out that I was right and the Luna Pro really was wrong, and that the reason involved the batteries. Turns out that the Luna Pro was designed before the advent of current semiconductor electronics. Instead of using a semiconductor voltage reference as the base of its measurements the way current meters do, the Luna Pro was designed to use mercury batteries. These batteries produce an extremely stable voltage that facilitates accurate measurements, whereas alkaline and other batteries do not. Meters using other batteries all depend for their accuracy on the addition of a voltage reference component to the electrical circuit. Today, unlike years ago, mercury is (rightly) regarded as a toxic substance to be avoided in consumer products. So the batteries that the Luna Pro requires are no longer readily available, and it doesn't work reliably with the ones that are.
I replaced the Luna Pro with a new Gossen Digisix meter. But my metering technique didn't work simply, because the new meter does not read out in the original Luna Pro scale. Instead, it reports in EV. But if I set the meter at ISO = 3200, then the EV measuremements become numerically equal to the old Luna Pro values that I remember. In this way the Digisix numbers are still measurements of light level alone, and I can use my familiar technique that is etched into my brain.
--- Mike
