Shooting without a lightmeter

How often do you guys don't use a lightmeter at all? I mean like rely only on the sunny 16 rule and don't even bring it with you? is this something even possible, to really just rely on it, I mean for sunny or not so sunny situations you can get by but is it really possible to go out and understand light without ever touching a lightmeter?

In the last 5-6 years I've rarely used a light meter when shooting outdoors (most of my work during non-winter months). Many years ago I spent about a year first guessing exposure using the sunny 16 guidelines and then measuring with a light meter until it was rare I had a 1/2 stop difference, which was always taken up by the film latitude. I no longer carry a light meter with my film bodies, although I keep a copy of the Ultimate Exposure Calculator in the glove compartment of my car, in case I encounter something I'm not familiar with (I have yet to need it).

I'm always out with a light meter, BUT I always second guess it unless I'm doing some tests. I started out long ago without one, so had a pretty good feel for what exposures should be which is how I noticed for the first time that a PX625 was not the same battery that it used to be.

 

The last time I had to rely on sunny 16 alone was a year ago when the battery on my New F1 went dead. Shot two rolls in the woods of Pennsylvania and 95% came out well.

If you think about it, almost all of the traditional film manufacturers had a printed exposure guide on the inside of their film boxes which was based on the sunny 16 rule. The millions of people who relied on those guides can't be entirely wrong. It is just a mindset which takes a little practice - it isn't rocket science.

Probably more important to get it just right if you're using slide film. Otherwise negative film tends to be forgiving. I took some night shots of a city skyline the other night and more or less guessed at the exposure settings based on what I've done before. I was using an air-bulb to control the shutter and just counted off one-one thousand, two-one thousand...

 

And I bracketed to be extra sure, but obviously I wasn't every exact about it. I expect at least one of the shots will turn out pretty good. :)

 

I'm not recommending that approach, just saying that there's a margin of error.

 

Mostly I use the camera's on-board meter and maybe I'll pull out my smartphone with the meter app on it if I want to double-check something. The meter on my Yashica TLR is generally in the ballpark but easily fooled. My other old cameras do better.

Edited January 10, 2018 by tomspielman

There was a time in the distant past when light meters were expensive and few had them. Millions of pictures have been taken with nothing more than that slip of paper and a bit of experience.

With meterless cameras, I will sometimes try to visually estimate the exposure, then check with a handheld meter. It's good practice.

 

I also carry an analog exposure calculator in my bag, which comes in handy sometimes:

 

Exposure-Mat - Free Light Meter

There was a time in the distant past when light meters were expensive and few had them. Millions of pictures have been taken with nothing more than that slip of paper and a bit of experience.

 

Well guys, this bit of experience he mentioned is exactly what I'm interested in, everything manual just like it used to be. I find it really interesting that they long ago would have to by trial and error get what the exposure was supposed to be and even though there's the lightmeter nowadays I still would love to keep doing it like the old days. I've been using an app in my phone to read random scenes without actually taking the photographs so that I can start getting used to different scenarios and light. Sometimes I get it right and sometimes not but I feel I'm already starting to get the hang of it, I find it harder to guess when there's no sun whatsoever and it's all shadows or really kinda dark :confused:

Also these exposure guides you guys mentioned seem to be extremely helpful so I'm definetely checking them out. thanks!

Here's a link to what I believe is one of the best/most complete ones: http://www.cppdh.org/download/jiffy-calculator-for-night-light-exposures.pdf

"....is it really possible to go out and understand light without ever touching a lightmeter?"

 

The human eye is extremely poor at estimating light levels. That's why lightmeters were invented. Sure, outdoors a guide can give you a vague idea of what the exposure should be, and B&W film latitude will get you a useable negative, but for colour slide film and indoors it won't.

 

"...nowadays I still would love to keep doing it like the old days."

 

- Why?

Actinometers and extinction light meters have been around since the late C19th. So how far back do you want to go to those 'old days'? It's not like a used light meter will cost you a fortune; maybe $20 for something reliable dating back to the 1970s or 80s.

 

Even hard-shadowed sunlight can vary by one stop at high or lowish latitudes throughout the year, and in overcast conditions it's almost impossible to guestimate the real exposure.

 

Get a light meter and stop messing about! Every professional, and those amateurs that could afford one, have used meters since the 1950s at least.

 

The light meter is just another tool of the craft, like a tripod or rangefinder. Would a carpenter guess measurements? Or a bricklayer refuse to use a level and line?

Edited January 11, 2018 by rodeo_joe|1

Uh why so salty i wonder ? "Stop messing about" I don't understand what you mean by that since I'm free to experiment to whatever degree I want and see what works best for me ? Besides why are u comparing me to professionals ? Level and line ? Carpenter ? I'm far from being a professional and don't even aim to be, another reason why your saltiness doesn't make any sense at all.

I can do passably well without a meter outside with negative film as long as the light isn't too tricky. If it IS tricky, you'd better believe the meter is coming out.

 

I was looking through some Provia transparencies the other day that I shot on either my Rolleicord or Rolleiflex probably in the '07 time frame without a meter, and honestly I was surprised at how good they still look. With that said, even then I often carried a Canon Powershot A540 in my pocket. It had a manual mode-if a bit clunky-and I found the meter to be pretty darn good in it.

 

These days, if I'm doing LF work I always have my Minolta IV around my neck, and have either the "spot" attachment(more like partial, but whatever) or incident attachment on it and the other attachment in my pocket and am judicious about using them. LF film is too precious to waste-not only is it expensive but logistics dictate that I rarely have more than a half dozen exposures on hand out in the field. Often it's only four-I'll stick a film holder in each of my back pockets and that's it. If I think I REALLY have a special shot, I might flip the holder over and expose the other side with a bit of bracketing, but that's rare and honestly not always even an option(Ansel tried to do that when he shot Moonrise, Hernandez New Mexico and the light had changed by the time he was ready for the next shot).

 

I tend to be a bit more free about guessing with MF, but then again not overly so. Back when I was frequenting the same venues(school gyms, auditoriums, hotel conference centers, etc) I kept a "cheater card" in my bag with the EVs for different different parts of the rooms established by incident readings since I found it a lot more reliable than going by the in-camera meter.

 

I'm also almost always out with either a "modern" 35mm or DSLR and will use those to meter. The Pocket Light Meter app on my iPhone is handy-it's more of a partial meter.

 

Finally, with a meterless camera if I'm walking around the same site and using something like my Leica, I'll often do a bit of metering in the beginning and then use my judgement for exposure beyond that. It basically only sees three films, though-Tri-X, FP4+, and Plus-X(yes, I have a stockpile), all of which are fairly forgiving. On a clear day, I might even Sunny 16 on that camera, but make educated guesses based on how the shadows are playing around.

When I was a kid I started with my dad's old Mercury II half frame camera and nothing else. Getting 72 shots on a roll and not having a light meter taught me a lot about light and what I was and wasn't capable of. Scale focusing taught me a lot about distances. If your livelihood doesn't depend on it, there's nothing wrong with testing yourself a bit just for fun and seeing how many exposures you can get right isn't much different from seeing how many space invaders you can shoot.

Some cameras like the Brownies and Instamatics had no exposure controls whatever. People still got good photos with them. Film latitude is such that you can overexpose by three of four stops and underexpose by two stops and still get good printable results. Maybe the Instamatics were set for two stop overexposure on a bright day which would get a normal expose on a dark cloudy day.

I ALWAYS use the light meter in my film cameras. When I'm shooting B&W film, I also use my Pentax Spotmeter V to get precise exposure data for the specific "zone" I want to place the main subject in.

The first 35mm camera I ever had was a Kodak Pony II, which had one fixed shutter speed, an aperture ring marked in EV, and EV exposure guide cards that fit into a holder on the back. I took many good pictures with it, and probably learned more about exposure that way than if I had blindly relied on a meter.

Light meters really became important with slide / transparency films. As mentioned previously, B&W and color negative films have quite a lot of exposure latitude, and with a modicum of skill can produce usable images under all but the worst conditions. The cardboard cards and calculators can be of considerable value and improve results for less experienced or under especially difficult conditions. Despite all of that, there are small and inexpensive light meters which are useful tools. Just a question of style & need.

Light meters really became important with slide / transparency films.

Absolutely 100%!

 

Modern Color Negative films and many B&W films have enough latitude that Sunny-16 with adjustments for cloudiness, etc., will almost always yield a usable negative.

 

That being said, the best quality negatives will come from accurate metering -- my favorite meter is my Gossen Luna-Pro SBC - its only drawback is that it is sometimes larger than the camera itself.o_O

Get a light meter and stop messing about! Every professional, and those amateurs that could afford one, have used meters since the 1950s at least.

 

The light meter is just another tool of the craft, like a tripod or rangefinder. Would a carpenter guess measurements? Or a bricklayer refuse to use a level and line?

 

If what's important is efficiency, consistency, and repeatable, professional results, then absolutely use a light meter and have a spare. But sometimes "messing about" is as important or more important. I would hope a bricklayer would forgo the level and line if they're building a snow fort with their kids.

 

Half the time I'm using expired film with a box speed of one thing and an actual speed of who knows what. It's a guesstimate. And I'm probably also using an old camera whose shutter may or not be perfectly calibrated, and same with the light meter. And even if the light meter in my Olympus OM-1 is calibrated properly, it may be as accurate as the light meter in my OM-2s which is a couple of generations newer. None of them are as good as a quality hand held meter of which I own exactly none. ;)

Gossen Luna-Pro SBC - its only drawback is that it is sometimes larger than the camera itself.o_O

 

That's why love my Minolta. It's on a long lanyard that I hang around my neck(in addition to my 4x loupe if I'm doing LF) and is so light that I forget about it until I need it.

Slides, which are used much less frequently today than when I was learning photography, were generally metered for the highlights (underexposure) whereas negative films were generally metered for the shadows (overexposure). I typically used the guideline of underexposing by approximately 1/2 stop from the sunny 16 rule for slides and usually got excellent exposures, as my first 35mm cameras didn't have light meters built in and the meters sold on the market, IMHO weren't all that reliable (silicon cell based). Cadmium sulphide based cells were a terrific improvement; but you still needed to make adjustments for reflectivity of subjects being metered - which is one reason I veered toward incident metering...which lead me to increased use of sunny 16 usage. From lots of conversations with friends in different parts of the world I've come to realize that the intensity and quality of light differs depending on where you are in the world. To that end, if you are seriously planning to work without a meter, that you spend a few days in an area you are unfamiliar with, comparing your best estimates with meter readings to determine if some sort of compensation factor is appropriate. I apply this factor to the ISO of the film, as it makes for easier mental calculations for me. My digital bodies have excellent built in metering, but again in extreme or unusual situations, compensation is often tantamount to excellent exposure. Almost every digital shot I go thru the sunny 16 mental comparisons, and probably 90% of the time they are the same as what the meters suggest.

I still pull out one of my Weston meters every once in a while. I like the III since it still has the same great construction and "feel" of the II, but uses ASA instead of Weston speeds.

 

Good selenium meters generally still work fine, although they have some extreme downsides vs. even CdS cells(virtually no low-light sensitivity even with the big cell "uncovered" on the Westons, slow response, and generally pretty broad coverage) but there were a lot of great photographs made using them.

I still have the slides I shot at Expo 67 as a kid, using a meterless Kodak Instamatic. Most turned out surprisingly well- it was sunny and sunny-16 prevailed. Probably a bit faded by now. Edited January 25, 2018 by William Michael

What about cameras like this? How would one understand how to get the correct exposure at the time?