Teach me how to get rid of the light meter

bmattock said:
That's because you don't know how to use a 1 degree spotmeter properly.
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An 1 degree spotmeter is great for accurately determining the contrast range of any given scene, and I agree that everyone learning photography should have tried that at least once, but for the style of photography that our rangefinder cameras tend to get used for it is rather useless. If you are opposed to guesswork as a guideline to exposure, which you seem to be, then technically you can't even transfer the kind of contrast data you get out of accurately measuring a scene with a spotmeter from one frame to the next. Using a spotmeter for determining exposure throughout the scene for every shot and then a rangefinder to take the picture seems wasteful to me - if you have that sort of time for every shot, get a proper large format camera and you will have more image quality (with respect to grays and details) as well as more creative control (with respect to perspective distortion, selective focus etc.)

Philipp
 
I think a lot of confusion here is from collating light metering and setting the exposure. These are two separate actions, you can use sunny 16 and set exposure, an incident reading and set exposure, or a spot and set exposure etc. Still the first part (measuring the light) doesn't give you *the* exposure, it only tells you the amount of light, EV, or scene contrast. Setting the exposure *is* a creative control, and is rather loosely related to precision of light metering.

Of course I wouldn't argue Bill's point that a good meter is the king when you want to know how many lumens, candles or EV are there, but it tells about exposure just as much as about composition.
 
i think bmattock and vincec have gone too far with arguing about exposures. only thing that is important is composition - that you cant change after taking photo. over and underexposure can be repaired in lab.
 
Wrong exposure (if by that we mean deviation from what photographer intended) can't be fixed in a lab. You can't create shadow detail, clean up highlights or get rid of grain without losing information. And you can alter composition post-factum with cropping, just as an imperfect approach.

Ideally you should get both in the way you want them at shooting time 🙂
 
nzeeman said:
i think bmattock and vincec have gone too far with arguing about exposures. only thing that is important is composition - that you cant change after taking photo. over and underexposure can be repaired in lab.
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The original topic was about exposure, not composition. Also, not all over and underexposure can be repaired in the lab. Improper exposure can eradicate information, and that cannot be repaired.

Richard
 
Not using a meter is like focusing by guessing the distance: in many situations, guessing works as there's leeway to accommodate poor guesses. But in other cases (close subject, long lens), your guess would probably be inaccurate. And I'm sure there are a few folk who are very good at estimating distances, even in difficult circumstances. But why bother since your camera has a much more accurate way of setting the focus?

(That said, it's handy to be able to estimate distances, just as it's useful to be able to estimate a ball-park exposure.)

I'm with bmattock: a meter is quicker and more accurate than the eye. As Bill points out, what we want is an absolute light reading, not a relative one - and the eye is notoriously bad at the former.

With a bit of practice, most of us can guess an exposure that will suffice - and a few of us may even be extremely good at it. None of us will ever be able to match the consistency of a meter.

As Bill also points out, blind faith in a meter simply pointed at a scene is asking for trouble, or, more often, a dull snapshot: what you meter is also important, as is knowing how you meter works (my Epson R-D1 is bottom-left average weighted (!)). Take this scene (granted it's an awkward exposure):

Rain Burst

A straight meter reading would have exposed the top right correctly - which would've been a disaster for the rest of the scene! So, I metered the top left, away from the sun, and added 2 stops for the shadows, with the intent that I'd bring the shadows out by 1 stop more when developing my Raw file (+3 stops in the camera would've blown out the top right). The final image pretty much matches what I saw out of my window.

If your camera has a meter, I fail to see why not using it brings more control. If your camera doesn't have a meter, I can see that always using an external meter can be a drag - and if the exposure
 
The purpose of this thread was to ask members views on how they take photographs without a light meter, because many people do this. Ruben asked for approaches and personal experiences.

In that respect, it's simply not on point to repeatedly insist there is absolutely no way to take consistently acceptable photographs without a light meter. That's the subject of some other thread.
 
i agree that composition isnt theme of this thread - but theme also wasnt using meter - and many people talk about that. so i just wanted to point out that there are others things also. i use sunny 16 and that works ok for me in all situations. mistakes made when using sunny 16 are not that big that cant be repaired. and ruben you can search net for EV values - there are sites with lists of situations for every EV number. you can find some on fred parkers site - i think they are good even in low light.
 
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