noob metering question

whats the difference between the camera's light meter and a hand held light

meter - when would a hand held meter be needed?

 

thank you for taking time to answer my dumb question.

 

John

Hi John, the meter in a camera is integral to the function of that camera. The Pentax LX can meter from -6ev up to 20 ev, very good for low light, but has no spotmeter. Whereas a dedicated handheld meter is entirely another tool. If your camera is on a tripod and you want to make incident readings of a scene then the handheld meter will be very useful.

 

Cheers.

A camera's light meter is usually measuring reflected light. It tries to make whatever it sees as close as it can to middle grey. So, for example if you meter snow then it will give ou a reading or an auto setting [if you're using that] that will make the snow appear middle grey, not white. Similarly if you have a frame with a lot of black in it the meter will give you a reading that will lighten that black and make it middle grey.

 

Neither of these readings will expose your subject as it should be. You can learn to know when to open up [use wider aperture or longer shutter speed] or stop down [smaller aperture or quicker shutter speed] for certain subjects / tones, or you could use a handheld incident meter that measures the light that is actually falling on a subject, whatever colour or tone it is.

Ummm....Ben, you missed a little bit here. First off, there are a variety of hand held light meters. Incident, refltected, spot, and color. Color measures the color temprature of the scene. And is much more acurate than the color readings (in theory) out of most Digital SLRs. Reflected measures the amount of light reflected back to the meter. This is much the same as the TTL (Through The Lens) metering of most cameras. Incident is a measurement of available lightthat will be bouncing back to the camera, it measures before reflection. Spot is a reflected meter that measures a small area instead of a larger one.

 

Now then, you use a color meter to figure out the temprature of the light you are shooting in. Daylight is aprox. 5200k, Tungsten (and correct my figures if they are off) is around 3200k. If you shoot a fil balanced for day in tungsten light, it gives a yellow cast. If you shoot Tungsten balanced film in daylight, it gives you a blue cast. Metering for color is especially handy in mixed lighting situations. It is not a neccesary component, and meters for it are rather expensive.

 

A reflected/spot meter needs to be used when you are not able to walk up right to the subject. Esspecially handy in situations such as racing, landscape and wildlife.

 

Incident measures available light. It is by far more acurate than reflected. Reflected has the flaw of thinking that what it reads is a neutral grey, whereas incident is measuring the input of light, and doesn't need neutral grey (as I understand it). This kind of meter is used when able to walk directly up to where the subject is. It is also highly used in studio photography, and is the best method for testing the output of your lights and not wasting large amounts of film

 

Hope I didn't throw too much at you.

A light meter will also measure reflected light, but it has the advantage of being separate from the camera. A lightmeter can also provide accurate incident and spot meter readings, whilst the camera is on the tripod.

Keep throwing, I was just keeping it simple for John.

thank you all very much - i understand much better now.

 

i think

 

thanks

 

John