Thread: Meters

Don't most of the new ones meter through the lense?

If you've got a good spot metre and intend to take shots that can use it then it could be of benefit. Most of the new cameras have a variety of TTL metering including spot, matrix or averaged but it still doesn't always beat taking a measurement on the subject.

Ta.

I don't think I'm likely to do much zone system or anything like that, and assumed that there's so much bracketing, etc.

Guess they don't take up much space.

Simon

I'd get rid of them. The thing about DSLRs is that it doesn't cost you anything to press the shutter button. If you don't like the exposure on a pic, adjust it and try again.

If you cannot get much money for it keep it just in case that you are interested in flora or macro photography in the future.
The meters on the new cameras are excellent but in some applications the dedicated meter can be handy.

Keep them and see how they help.

From a scientific point of view they should be better than the built in system where there is a single subject. For example, a portrait shot. At the other end of the spectrum they don't help too much with landscapes.

Cameras have meters in them which perform all sorts of complex zone calculations to try and reach the accuracy of a cheap hand held meter. Why go to all this effort to TRY and reach what a cheap meter can do? Because it is not always possible, and certainly rarely preferred to walk up to your subject and click the meter infront of their face.

Cameras need to expose for the amount of light striking the subject, the ONLY way to do this correctly is to measure the light striking the subject. Hence the hand held meter will measure this. The meter in the camera will measure the light reflected from the subject and calculate from this how much is likely to be striking the subject.

The reflected light meter in your camera does not know if you are looking at a white wedding dress on a dark day, or a black dinner jacket on a bright day. As you can imagine you could get similar reflected light levels from each. So it guesses that the scene is an average mid gray (18% to be precise) and exposes accordingly. Hence weddings are hard to expose for. An incident light meter will measure the light on the scene and nail it first try (in theory).

For some more info on this try the following links:

Guide to using a hand-held light meter

Meters

Having said all that, cameras are getting quite good at guessing what the exposure should be, despite the inferior method they use. You may not see enough improvements in day to day use to justify the weight/space of carrying the meters.

If you want to try to measure the light striking the subject yourself you can help out your camera. Grass is a good approximation for the mid gray that cameras expose for - when it is green. So you if you want to know how much light is hitting the bride in the glowing white dress take a spot meter reading off a some grass beside her which is in a equal level of sun/shade. If she is getting married inside a church this may be tricky to organise

You can even buy cards which are exactly the right shade of gray to expose from. You have the subject hold one in front of their face, take a spot meter reading and away you go. But I think it would be easier to carry a meter...

Cheers, Steve