Light metering

<p>Hello all,<br>

I've recently bought a second-hand Mamiya RZ67 Pro II with the 110mm Sekor lens, WLF and 120 film and Polaroid backs. It's all in lovely condition and am very pleased.<br>

However, being a relative newcomer to photography and having previously only used a Canon EOS 450D, i'm finding that calculating exposure for the Portra 160NC film i'm using is quite difficult. My DSLR certainly doesn't seem to be giving me readings i can use on the Mamiya.<br>

As a result, i'm thinking about investing in a light meter? Possibly the Sekonic L-358 on the basis that it's the most reasonably priced model that provides aperture priority mode.<br>

I mainly shoot landscapes and this a hobby rather than profession so it's unlikely it will ever be used in a studio set-up.<br>

Any advice on whether the light meter (and specifically the L-358) is the right way to go would be much appreciated.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I see no reason that your DSLR is not giving readings that you can use on your MF camera. Metering is metering, whether it's hand held or in-camera.</p>

<p>Well, do you shoot with flash as well as ambient light? This meter is a flash meter and although it will work perfectly well with natural light, there might still be some less expensive or better alternatives. I will say that sekonic meters are very good and long lasting. I have one that is over 20 years old and works as good now as the day I got it.</p>

<p>But if you are going to shoot in existing light conditions for the most part and in the landscape, I think that a good spot meter, one degree type, is really the best. Your camera will slow you down from what you might be used to with a 35mm and the spot meter just adds to the thoughtfulness, and success, with larger formats. An incident meter, like the 358, reads light falling on a subject and to get the best reading, you should read at the subject. If the scene is far off and lit differently than where you are standing, it is pretty useless. A spot meter reads the light reflected from the object being photographed, like your 450D, except that it reads very specific light--a small section. Understanding the zone system and the spot meter will insure that you get the best exposures in any given situation. It might take some time to master, but once you do it is really easy, quick and satisfying.</p>

<p>Lee:<br /> When I started shooting MF, I had what sounds like a similar experience, and wound up with one of Sekonic's big meters via the same reasoning - I was used to shooting aperture priority on electronic cameras. What I soon learned is that the reason users of MF mechanical cameras use EV and/or shutter priority is that you can't set intermediate shutter speeds on these cameras. So you quickly learn to meter in a new way based on non-AP shooting, or you are forever fiddling with the meter readings to find a setting that can work with your mechanical shutter. I thought I would need spot metering too, but soon found it be be overkill for 99% of my shooting, and rather tedious.<br /> I moved down to the L-308 and found everything much simpler, faster and more accurate after a little practice. Cheaper, too.</p>

<p>Lee:<br /> In rereading your post I noticed you also shoot with Portra, a relatively exposure-tolerant film, which is all the more reason why a simple setup with a pocket-sized L-308 like I described should give excellent results. I shoot landscapes on slide film almost exclusively which is much less forgiving of exposure errors, and it works beautifully with incident/relected readings once you get the hang of measuring correctly.</p>

<p>Hi Lee -<br>

I hope I'm understanding your question correctly.<br>

Set your l-358 to ASA 160 and get an incident reading. Set the shutter speed and f/stop reading on your Mamiya. Shoot.<br>

Or....<br>

Set your Canon to manual<br>

Set it to the the same film speed as NC160 which is 160<br>

Set it to desired shutter speed.<br>

Set the f/stop to the shutter speed per L358.<br>

Start taking pictures with each shot going up and down the f/stop scale<br>

Set the Mamiya to whatever looks best to you on the Nikon.</p>

<p>Hope this works.</p>

<p>Carlos</p>

 

<p>Get the Sekonic 358 or the smaller, cheaper 308 but get meter, OK? You need incident/flash metering for productive/satisfying MF shooting and your film SLR or DSLR's reflective metering isn't going to cut it. There's a semi-pricey 5 degree spot attachment for the 358. You don't need a spot meter for many kinds of landscape shooting if the light hitting your(and your meter) and the subject are the same--funny but the sun tends to work that way. Incident metering is what you need. Having flash metering capability baked into the same meter is a huge plus if and when you try controlled lighting. Your keeper quotient will be much higher with incident metering--this matters a great deal with 10 shots/120 roll.</p>

<p>It's impossible to meter sky, clouds at sunset, reflections in the water with incident metering. It's hard to measure the range between shadows and highlights with an incident meter. It's inconvenient to swim across the stream, take a reading, and swim back (and gives the wrong answer if there's morning fog between you and the subject). Which is why spot metering is the standard technique for landscape work.</p>

<p>Thanks for the all the responses.<br>

The Sekonic spot meters look like they are a little out of my price range, at the moment.<br>

Rick Donnelly makes good points about my camera and selected film. Looking at my Mamiya's shutter settings i certainly don't have the same flexibility as the 450D, however i can select half half-stop shutter speed increments.<br>

I'm thinking i might go for the Sekonic L-308 as he suggests and see how i get on.</p>

<p>Lee, just a note regarding the RZ's, if you haven't discovered this already. I found that they were very prone to burning batteries pretty quickly. Be sure to turn off the camera when you aren't using it. Those little batteries are expensive!</p>

<p>Thanks John. I don't think the Pro II has an "off" button as such, but locking the shutter prevents it from being depressed accidentally and draining the battery?</p>

<p>I've bought <a href="http://www.shutterbug.com/equipmentreviews/accessories/1008kenkos/">Kenko 2100</a> (a rebranding of Minolta Flash Meter VI) for my Rz Pro II and it works like a charm. Provides incident, spot and flash metering and is very easy to use. Also a bit more compact than Sekonic 758.</p>

<p>Lee, I sold the RZ bodies a long time ago, but I do seem to remember that the shutter lock was essentially the off button. I used them commercially and would always leave them on, probably because I replaced my RB bodies with the RZ's and RB's don't have batteries. Since I shot mostly large format, it might be several days or weeks and I would go back to them and the batteries were gone. I kept the RB lenses, so I could still set my shutter speeds and aperture without batteries, in fact, I am trying to remember what the battery did for me anyway? It's been awhile!</p>

<p>John, from what i can gather the only operation the battery's power is the firing of the shutter. </p>

<p>Hi Lee. Here is a different view. I have been using an RZ for more than a decade for landscape work with Velvia 50 and 100. I always use a metered finder. It is much faster and simpler to work with. I set it on CW most of the time. If you use split ND filters properly all the highlights and shadows will be well within the latitude of the film and center weighted metering works very well. The metering finder had 1/3 stop compensation so bracketing your shots is straightforward as well. I will also use a spotmeter to analyze a scene to figure how much light to hold back the the split nd's. When the magic hour comes which is usually more like half that or less and you want to get multiple compositions quickly the metering finder takes care of much work for you. When the finder is "on" it will be drawing power from that little battery but I have turned off the power on the finder and left it in that state for days and have not experienced battery drain as long as the shutter button is not being partially depressed.</p><div></div>

<p>Mark, thanks for that. I have looked at the AE finder but the one's that seem to fit the Pro II are still very expensive. Additionally, i've heard mutterings about how difficult it is to compose shots when compared to the WLF? Light lost in the prism?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>My finder is every bit as bright as my DSLR finder and seems to present a bigger view. It is also latterally corrected. Years ago before I could afford the AE prism I just used my handheld spot meter and later when I could afford it got the prism. I found my shots were just as well exposed with the prism and it was quicker to use. In the shot above I took a spot meter reading on the grayish rocks. The read the sky and it was about 3-4 stops brighter. I put on my polarizer and a 2 stop split nd over the upper half. I bracketed +2/3 and -2/3 stop and the best one was the first shot with no exposure compensation. If you want the very best color and finest grain use Velvia or comparable slide film. This shot above enlarged to 30x36 has more detail by magnitudes than any I have taken with a 16 mp digital. That is why I still use my RZ. </p>

<p>Hi Lee<br /> <br /> I don't know the 450D but I expect you are being confused by the odd ball part f stop labeling where the stops marked on your Mamiya lens don’t have the numbers shown in the 450D, you could research this and find a log calculation which will give you the information but it is much simpler to buy a meter which will have the MF standard stops. Now having said that be aware that meters vary and you will need to take notes until have you can learnt the best way of using your meter. <br /> <br /> The Pro 11 has half stops on time.<br /> <br /> <br /> David Littleboy is on to it. An incident light meter is of very limited value as a general purpose instrument. Spot metering and learning the Zone system is good or a wide angle ( 30 deg. ) meter such as a Gossen with 9 volt battery ( Lunasix, Profisix etc ) as you can check the range of the scene by lifting and lowering the meter and choosing the mid point, very simple, cheap and works well with C41 film.<br /> <br /> <br /> Best Regards<br /> <br /> Rob.</p>

<p>Make sure you get the RIGHT prism finder for your ProII, the one with the knobs on the top. It seems there is a lot of Mamiya equipment being dumped right now so you should be able to pick one up pretty reasonably on the big auction site.</p>

<p>God, to think I've gotten great exposures with an incident meter whose "very limited value as a general purpose instrument" should have worked against me. I'm truly blessed, I guess!</p>

<p>I have considerable sympathy with a view that "an incident light meter is of very limited use as a general purpose instrument" <strong><em>when applied to landscape photography </em></strong>which is what this thread's about. But if you're using film that has a whole lot of latitude, then just about any form of metering that isn't downright broken or hopelessly applied will get you a result except where conditions are extreme. Techniques that are sub-optimal for this application ( though not so for others) seem to be great for much of the time because they aren't really being tested too hard with colour neg films. </p>

<p>There are a large number of circumstances where I wouldn't choose to meter a landscape using an incident meter, but then I use much more critical media. I prefer to use multiple spot readings to arrive at my exposures and have come across very few circumstances indeed when that approach doesn't get a result. I prefer to use one process that is universally applicable than constantly have to assess whether the method I'm using is appropriate to the circumstances. </p>

<p> But I have to keep coming back to the fact that with wide latitude colour neg film all sorts of techniques from incident to wide angle reflective, to plain informed guesswork have their adherents and are able to deliver decent results much of the time. Its even hard to beat the drum about spotmetering too hard since</p>

<ul>

<li>Most people I've seen using spotmeters aim at what they think is a mid-tone and apply that single reading to their photograph- which isn't even close to the best way IMO. The best metering tool in the world can give dreadful results if not used right.</li>

<li>There's no getting round the fact that using a spotmeter properly involves taking at least a few readings and a certain amount of mental arithmetic and judgment. Many people just don't want to go through that or believe that they will be continuingly slow should they do so. </li>

</ul>

<p>Actually no. An incident light meter is about the best you can get. Reflective light meters can easily be fooled by scenes with a high brightness range. An incident light meter is not subject to this effect. As long as the dome of the meter is in the same light as the subject, you almost can't miss. With a little practice, and some help in the form a guide which you can find <a href="http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm">here</a> , it's almost too easy. There are big differences in the way a digital sensor and a piece of film record light, and the metering systems in the cameras are designed accordingly. It is not always very good to rely on readings taken from a digital camera to work optimally on film and vice versa, until you've calibrated one to the other. </p>

<p>"As long as the dome of the meter is in the same light as the subject, you almost can't miss."</p>

<p>This is a condition that, as I pointed out above, is often difficult to meet when doing landscape photography, since the subject is way over there in different light (see Mark's image above). And incident metering simply doesn't apply when there are light sources (like sunsets) in the image. And what happens when you don't want the technically accurate product catalog metering? The human eye is easily fooled as to what the intensities actually are, but the artistic eye knows how they want the subject rendered. Spot metering takes the easily fooled part out, and lets you put the artistic part in. Sure, you can take an incident reading and say "well, I want to render this a bit brighter", but it doesn't give you a way to quantify the meaning of "a bit brighter", whereas zone-system-informed spot metering does.</p>

<p>And a spot meter can't be "fooled": it gives you an actual reading of the intensity that the film is going to see. (If you don't know how to use that reading to get to a desired density on the film, that's not the meter's fault.)</p>

<p>I've not used an RZ67 or it's metering prisms, but the metering prism on the 645 ProTL worked well. The spot is a bit fat, so you have to find large areas to meter from, though. I'd avoid the metered prisms on the RB67 because of the weight and because I like waist level viewfinders.</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>"And incident metering simply doesn't apply when there are light sources (like sunsets) in the image."</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Unless you want the light source itself to be exposed 'correctly' (the rest not), it works great then too.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p><em>"And what happens when you don't want the technically accurate product catalog metering? The human eye is easily fooled as to what the intensities actually are, but the artistic eye knows how they want the subject rendered. Spot metering takes the easily fooled part out, and lets you put the artistic part in." </em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>That is not true at all.</p>

<p>Spot metering, in fact, adds the "easily fooled" bit in light metering that is completely absent in incident light metering.</p>

<p>Incident light metering meters light. Use it, and you always - without any chance of being fooled - get the "technically correct" result.<br>

You have to use your 'technical' judgement when using a spot meter, guessing how the refective properties of what you point the meter at affect the reading, and thus the exposure.<br>

Very easy to get fooled.</p>

<p>Want to let loose your artistic judgement?<br>

You then need to be able to recognize how things will be put on film, and what you need to do to change that.<br>

Something you always <strong><em>have</em></strong> (!) to do when using a spot meter.<br>

Something you can quite easily do when using an incident light meter.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p><em>"Sure, you can take an incident reading and say "well, I want to render this a bit brighter", but it doesn't give you a way to quantify the meaning of "a bit brighter", whereas zone-system-informed spot metering does."</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>So that too is not true.<br>

The spot meter will not tell you at all how bright the thing you point it at is. It only tells you how to expose the film to make (!) that bit you point the meter at a middle grey.<br>

That's it. It can and will do no more.</p>

<p>If you want it brighter, you just adjust exposure so it appears brighter (by the amount you adjust exposure by).<br>

But where incident light metering makes it as bright as it needs to be to be "technically accurate" without further ado, so the adjustment is based on that, the spot meter first has you guessing (and it cannot be anything but that - pure guessing. There is no way the spot meter will help you) how to adjust the exposure to make it technically accurate first. So first guess, then let your artistic eye loose at it.</p>

<p>So if you want things go wrong very easily, or want to get things right with the greatest possible difficulty, use a spot meter.<br>

Else, use an incident light meter.</p>

 

<p>"it works great then too."</p>

<p>You can't be that wrong, can you? Really, tell me how to use an incident meter to expose a sunset sky.</p>

<p>"You have to use your 'technical' judgement when using a spot meter"<br>

No, you have to use your artistic judgement. The spot meter tells you how to place the metered subject at zone V, you then decide what zone you want it placed. Do you really not understand that? Go read Adams again. Sheesh.</p>

<p>"So that too is not true"<br>

Nope, I'm correct here as well. The incident meter doesn't tell you how to place a particular section of the subject at a particular zone. Your eye is easily fooled about absolute brightnesses, but is just fine for artistic decisions about how you want things rendered. Incident metering doesn't give you the information you need to make those decisions. You should get out of the studio more often, QG.</p>

<p>"So if you want things go wrong..."<br>

If you want things to go wrong, just be QG. Then you'll not know how to use a spot meter. For those of us who do, it's a far more powerful tool when the light isn't perfectly even boring studio lighting.</p>