Light meters

[Allan Batchelor]

Now im away to venture into film photography im thinking a light meter may be a wise purchase. Who has any recommendations or advice on said item.

The camera I ended up getting was a Nikon F90x withan AF 50mm f1.8 and it will be used for my landscape auld building shooting

 

[Pete Askew]

While a hand-held meter would be a useful thing to have, why not start with the built-in one on the camera?

 

[Allan Batchelor]

I will do Pete was just wondering how much of a help they can since this film lark is all pretty much new to me and im so used to having live view on my D300 and sort of using that as a guide.

 

[Brian Moore]

Allan,...Nae need tae run oot fur a meter straight away just because o' film.

My F1 has a meter but often I don't use it. I like the Sunny 16 Rule. However, I do feel that I should have a good meter to help with tricky lighting situations. But I'm not too hung up on not having one at the moment.

Sunny 16: In bright daylight (when you're on the Continent or when yer doon among the Sassenachs) set your shutter speed to the nearest reciprocal of your film ASA. (ASA 100? Use 1/125th shutter speed or 1/100 if you have it. ASA 400? Use 1/400th,...etc.) Set your aperture at f16. Fire away. Negative film has a lot of latitude so you'll be fine. (With slides there's not so much latitude so you have to be more precise.)

For average Scottish daylight you'll have to compensate. Use the "Driech 5.6 Rule" as a starting point. Set your shutter to the nearest reciprocal of your ASA, then adjust the aperture to f5.6.

 

[Craig Sperring]

I use a Sekonic L-308S a great little meter.

 

[Chris Dodkin]

If you do want to go hand held - there is a free option if you have an iPhone

Just search on the APP store - you'll see some light-meter apps you can download - you just point your iPone at the scene and it gives you your readings

I have Lightmeter, which I used to great success with my old Lubitel - seemed to get the metering pretty accurate.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/light-meter-free/id410228606?mt=8

If you want a physical handheld - you have plenty to choose from.

Gossen and Sekonic are two of the main players - and the meters split into a number of sub categories (please excuse if you know this already)

Analog or digital - do you want a needle and dial display, or a digital readout

Incident or Reflected - do you want your meter to measure the light falling on it, or the light reflected off of the subject

Less expensive meters are analog and incident - they work perfectly well to measure the light falling on them, and the subject by inference, and give you the setting for your camera. This is a very consistent way to meter, and is the metering used for studio flash work, for example

Digital gives the same result but may appear to provide a higher degree of accuracy - i.e. 1/3 of a stop is typical - this may or may not be really relevant to your work

Refelcted - useful to meter a subject where you are not able to measure the light falling on it, or where the reflected light from the subject may be very much altered by it's color/shade. But, if you meter a white car for example, you get one reading for exposure - if you meter the black tires, you'd get a different reading - this is the 'issue' with reflective metering (as used in cameras)

Slightly cheesy incident vs reflected metering video here - but it gets the point over

[video=youtube_share;1Xs3u2vn6AU]http://youtu.be/1Xs3u2vn6AU[/video]

I like the Sekonic L-358 digital meter - but not cheap at £279.99 on Amazon UK

Lower cost would be the analogue - Studio Deluxe III L-398A Classic Analogue Light Meter

£139.95 on Amazon UK

For reflective and incident work - a true spot meter - I use the Sekonic Digitalmaster L-758

This is a mutts-nuts model, all out, fully featured, stupid money, buy it once for life

£417.16 on Amazon UK

You can buy used - but I would say don't buy 'old old' meters as they may no longer be accurate - stick to more recent models and you'll be fine, and save some coin.

Typically they get bought, not used much, and sold in excellent condition some time later.

I do have an old Gossen MasterSix, which is a Hummer of a meter - huge, with a bevy of add-on units

I used to think it was the dogs, until I got the Sekonic - but it was a used purchase for peanuts, and I still keep it in my kit.

Note - no two meter manufacturers seem to agree on exposure standards - so meters do not agree on exposure - odd but true

More pricey meters can be calibrated to a camera - but for most people this is just not a factor to ever worry about as film latitude takes care of any delta.

Hope that helps?

 

[Kev Pugh]

Brill Chris but you'll scare the laddie off. I use the 308 personally mainly when using film or stetting up studio shots, simple and accurate for entry level.

 

[David Mitchell]

I have a vintage light meter, cost about £4 but you can use this which is free:

Squit Photo

It uses the sunny 16 rule and its a simple sliding calculator - like a slide rule, I used it on my Bessa and they came out correctly exposed, really easy to use.

 

[Larry Bolch]

Note - no two meter manufacturers seem to agree on exposure standards - so meters do not agree on exposure - odd but true

Films always had a published ASA or ISO rating, however, when buying a new batch of a single emulsion, we would test and establish our own EI—exposure index—with the specific meters we used. Pro films often came with a data-sheet based upon the specific emulsion number which showed how far it was off-target. Not only did film deviate from the published figure, but each meter had its own way of reading as Chris said. Most critical however, each photographer had their own way of reading a given meter. Thus the EI could vary at least ±1.0EV or more. Slide films had two EI numbers, one for publication and the other for projection. Shooting for publication, highlight detail was critical, so the higher number was chosen to preserve highlight detail. Those preparing the half-tones for the press, could use masks to bring up shadow detail. For projection, shadow detail was all important, so a thinner slde was called for, thus a lower EI number.

Even with the best of metering, a lot of shooters bracketed slides in one-third stop intervals, and chose the two versions after the fact.

I own one of of the very first digital spotmeters. One read the brightest significant highlight and the darkest shadow and stowed them in memory. It would show the dynamic range of the scene on its scale. Knowing the dynamic range of the film you could pretty much determine how much bracketing was needed. It also had knowledge of a generic slide film, with buttons to give a shadow bias, average and highlight bias exposure. Bracketing from the shadow to highlight bias reading always gave good results and tended to save film.

Colour negative was more forgiving, but using the bias readings gave absolute assurance of good exposure. With colour negatives, often the average reading was sufficient for an excellent negative that would yield the optimum print. Spot metering was only one technique. I carried a combination incident and reflected meter as well. However, when through-the-lens metering came along, life got to be a bunch better. Just as auto-exposure can be fooled now, it still required a photographer to determine how reliable it was under a given set of circumstances.

 

[Allan Batchelor]

Cheers Chris for the write up kind confirmed some stuff i had read and some i didnt know.
I was looking at the 308 myself Kev.
David im in Scotland whats sun

Well out in the snow this morning and had a play with Brians dreich 5.6 rule will send off to get devloped n see what happens.

 

[David Mitchell]

Cheers Chris for the write up kind confirmed some stuff i had read and some i didnt know.
I was looking at the 308 myself Kev.
David im in Scotland whats sun

Well out in the snow this morning and had a play with Brians dreich 5.6 rule will send off to get devloped n see what happens.

Don't panic, there are 'overcast' section on the sliding scale, alas I believe you might only be able to use part of the scale, it doesn't include 'massive snow storm', 'darker than the night' or 'acts of God' on the scale, but it should be of some use at some point

 

[Mark Hoy]

Minolta also make/ made some great flash meters.