yet another lighting question...

[wayne_f1]

Chimping the histogram may work OK for one flash on the hot shoe, but the flash meter becomes much more necessary with multiple lights. Metering the camera exposure is the least of it. :)

 

After you set the main light power level, then (for example), you may know you want the fill light to be perhaps one stop less (in this case). You know you want the background light the same as the main (in this case - there are many cases). You know you want the hair light one stop more than main (in this case, dark hair). You know those details are exactly what you want, you just want to repeat the setup you did yesterday, but it is less clear how to get there. This is otherwise difficult, because the lights and modifiers and distances are probably all different. You have no clue about absolute or relative levels without the meter to show you. I suppose we can keep twiddling all the lights until it looks OK, but the flash meter makes this be trivial and it is quickly done... You simply adjust the main light power until it meters f/8, the fill to f/5.6, the background to f/8, and the hair to f/11. Then meter for the camera and you're done.

 

You simply just know exactly what you have with the meter. That is valuable.

 

But for only a couple of lights and no flash meter, then this White Towel Method can be helpful to get it close: http://super.nova.org/DPR/#Histogram