Using a Light Meter - Still a Necessity?

I have owned and used a Sekonic light meter for my studio work and sometimes in the field for portraits for the past six years. I am

wondering however, if there are any pro photographers who do not use a light meter, and if so how and why.

 

I've never used a LM for any event shooting, either shooting with natural light or on-camera flash.

 

Thanks,

 

Randy

<p>I still find it an indispensable tool, reflected light measured by the camera only tells 25% of the story I think so especially where a good balance of lighting is profitable, I will keep using a LM / FLM .</p>

<p>Most of my shooting is outdoors, and only occasionally do I still use a lightmeter, having mastered the "sunny 16" guidelines many decades ago.</p>

<p>Yes, a long roll portrait studio in a local department store employed 2 or 3 gals as photographers but had fixed lighting and no need to ever vary camera settings beyond zoom or altitude. <br>

I don't know how helpful a light meter still is to a really modern photographer using all the technology at hand. - There are wireless TTL monolights for Canikon now. Some cameras lend themselves to tethered shooting and others might offer informative previews in their EVFs. I never tried that stuff but could imagine it works well enough? Its maybe easier and faster to adjust lights according to a huge on screen preview than to multiple flash meter pops. <br>

Metering is just a crutch of limited use when manufacturers tell f-stops of variable aperture zooms with a gazillion dim elements inside instead of t-stops and add their own pretty unique interpretation of "ISO" as icing to that cake. <br>

My 2ct. - I am still using my meter but mainly to get close to proper exposure that I'll doublecheck by histogram chimping or to check if I am lighting evenly. </p>

<p>I used a light meter for every scene when I used MF film cameras. Since switching to a Dslr some years ago I much prefer to use the camera's meter and check the result on a histogram, repeating/adjusting as necessary, which it usually isn't. So both my hand held Sekonics were sold when I sold the MF cameras. For my type of photography- outdoors , no fashion work requiring spot-on control of colours etc- I can't see any way in which a hand held meter would improve what I do nowadays. </p>

A flashmeter's a definite necessity, since E, I,

Adyoh-TTL flash exposure is worse than

guesswork most of the time.

 

For ambient light I rarely use a handheld meter

unless it's for copying work, where TTL metering

often fails. Incident light measurement gets it bang on

every time.

<p>When I was still using film I do use the light meter a lot. Now I am using digital I still use the meter but not for determining exposure.</p>

<p>Some kind of meter, either in camera or separate, is essential for most people because it is difficult, if not impossible, to correctly determine brightness in all situations.</p>

<p>My light meter is still an essential tool to me. The only real difference in shooting digital versus film is that you can easily and instantly review lightly and exposure. That is nothing groundbreaking. A polaroid accomplished the same purpose in analog days. There is nothing more magical about the exposure metering in current digital cameras versus the last generation of film cameras. My "old" Nikon F100 meters exactly as any digital body does.</p>

<p>A light meter is about consistency and saving time. If I shoot a subject in consistent lighting (indoors or out) the camera metering may drift slightly depending on exactly where I place the subject in the frame. For portraits, background and clothing can throw the camera further off even if the lighting is constant. Metering once and shooting the same exposure and white balance for many frames gives me a fixed baseline to adjust from in post. Then if I do want to make a change to the raw processed images, I can apply the same change to ALL the images in the set because they are all exposed exactly the same. Otherwise, I'd have to adjust each image individually.</p>

<p>I use a meter when it is advantageous. Controlling background tone in studio via it's reflective vs subject incident. It's how I control gel color. (thank you, Tim Ludwig and Mr Collins) Also helps speeding up dialing in ratios between multiple lights and accurately repeating a set up. Standing at subject, can dial in all light power in seconds adjusting power from there. Fine tune on monitor. Time is money and getting more shots equates to more shots to sell. Doesn't take many wall prints to pay for a meter. I often find myself trying to squeeze in another set up and a meter pares time of the setup time. Also helps maximize sensor dynamic range taking reflective brightest outdoor bg reading where want detail then placing highlights at approx zone 8 increasing exposure 3 stops(my meter is calibrated to my camera's brightest detail). Great shooting outside or balancing flashed subject with sky or bright bg. Same when window is in an interior shot. When using film, it is where I start with my "test shot-like a polaroid" in my digital camera. At $2 a click, I don't want to be doing lots of bracketing. </p>

<p>I use an incident flash meter when setting up lights in the studio. Most of the rest of the time I just use the meter int he camera, and I did that with film even before I started shooting digital. When I first started off in photography, I couldn't afford a meter so I learned the sunny f/16 rule and shot without one for a few years (with cameras that did not have a meter). I still use a meter with manual film cameras that don't have a meter (my view camera, my Mamiya TLR, my Leica M3) but I don't shoot often with those cameras any more.</p>

Funny thing is, during my early years as an assistant we never used light meters, shooting still life with large format

cameras. There are so many factors to consider,that knowing your polaroids was key (and we shot slides). Then came

the years working with model, smaller cameras and metering became second nature along with a healthy interpretation of

polaroids. Once I worked mixing strobe with ambient and shooting to film latitude, we couldn't do it without a meter. Now

shooting digital, one could get far with trial and error, but the usage of meter, mixing light and adding strobes to mimic the

ambient apperance of a room, makes any setup much quicker and quantifiable. With consistent and reliable results. And

a color meter is more important than ever...