Spot metering landscape (Sekonic light meter)

<p>Can someone take me through this and also Is a hand held light meter of any use at night?</p>

<p>I got one cheap so just want to put it to use, I have been alright without one ;)</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

<p>There are 3 things in your question:<br>

- hand held : Nowaday, all cameras have pretty good meter inside, so a hand held is much less important compared to the time when many cameras have no meter. However, most people use a hand-held meter not because it is handheld but because it is an incident meter which can also meter the flash power. Just because it is hand-held doesn't mean it is incident<br>

- one cheap: this is the worst part, the cheap meters may be worthless also<br>

- any use at night?: The need of a meter is more important when it is dark (it is much harder to judge by your eyes in this case) </p>

 

<p>Spot meter the brightest area, then spot meter the darkest area...Then, set your metering/exposure accordingly. If the DR can't cover it all, shoot accordingly to what's most vital to the scene. Or rule out what's not needed in the pics. Or bracket and HDR them later...I'm sure other landscape experts can fill in what I missed as I'm not a landscape shooter. Simon, have fun with the meter...</p>

<p>If you check out Sekonic.com,you will find an excellent series of tutorials. Not specific to this brand -all meters are subject to the same basic techniques.</p>

<p>I never use a light meter at night, unless I'm using my DSLR which has a built in light meter. With my med. format gear and RF cameras and usually my SLRs I typically use something like the Ultimate Exposure Guide....have been doing this for over 40 years and it seems to work fine.</p>

<p>Spot meters are often not a good choice for outdoor work at night unless the scene is well-lit. Thats because their sensitivity to low levels of light isn't great and they typically stop working at around EV2. Neither is incident a lot of use when the camera is closer or further from a source of artificial light than the scene itself. Thats why so many people rely on "rules of thumb" for night-time unassisted exposures. If your exposure of night scenes is OK without a handheld meter, I think its doubtful you're going to see a lot of improvement with one. </p>

<p>Hmm that is what I heard David, although a few people I know have expressed they would like a spot meter still for landscapes, I am seeing less and less reasons for purchasing this light meter as I don't shoot many portraits using strobes although I wouldn't rule it out in the future. Ok thanks all for the input.</p>

A spot meter was good when shooting film. I would meter the darkest element in a scene that I wanted to appear as pure black in the print and then meter the highlights to see where they fell. Then I would over or under develop the film to place the highlights on zone 9. With digital, you can just use the histogram to see where the highlights fall and adjust exposure so there is no clipping to the right and then convert for the shadows in Photoshop.

 

I suppose one could use a spot meter with digital to get an overall idea of the high and low elements in a scene but the histogram itself would do the same thing.