How to use a hand to determine exposure?

[jlemire]

I have read many times on photo.net about using your hand (and

adjusting 1 or so stop) to determine middle tone. I am a bit

confused about the details of this. Specifically, does it matter

that my hand is only and arms length away from my camera when my

subject may be a mountain off in the distance? Does focus matter?

Should the hand fill the entire view finder? I know that I may want

to adjust my exposure for a variety of reasons, but will sticking my

hand in front of my lens be a good starting point? Thanks!

[nathan_cohen]

Frankly, it is best to blow a roll of film and experiment.

 

My best results come about when my hand is fully lit and fills the field of view. It need not be in focus. In fact, a gray card is a continuous surface with no detail nor variation. You can achieve the same by blurring.

 

If you use the spot metering then spot on the hand, at any distance, preferably arms length.

 

Of course, the best reason to do this is that strangers (seeing you) will either think your nuts or camera-cool:-)

[jonathan_ratzlaff]

I generally make sure that my hand is in the same light as my subject. You wasnt teo ensure that for whatever metering system you are using is covering the entire hand. Spot metering is the most convenient as you don't need to worry about your body shading your hand so much. I generally open up 2/3 to one stop from the meter reading on my hand for slide film and more for print film.

the most important thing to remember is that your hand must be lit the same way as your subject.

[Ed_Ingold]

Your hand (Caucasian) has about twice the reflectance as an 18 percent grey card, and is a lot easier to carry. Distant scenes, like mountains, tend to be much lighter than "hand" readings, due to haze and UV. For distant scenes, grass (or similarly colored foliage) is reasonably close to 18% reflectance.

 

You shouldn't need to do this for an "average, sunlit scene." It's useful for backlit scenes of people, or objects against a dark background. The latter is often true in closeups of flowers.

 

Before cameras got so smart, I'd use the "hand" reading as-is for color and open up 1 stop for B&W (or negative color).

[wind.dk]

As you can deduce from the other answers, yes it does matter that your hand is an arms length away, if your subject is literally a mountain.

 

Your hand is a grey card substitute and a grey card is sort of an incident light meter substitute. An incident lightmeter should be used in the position of the subject and working back from that, so should your hand (if this were the People Photography forum things would start to get interesting at this point :)

 

The key for incident metering is to meter the light that falls on the subject. So the meter needs to be in the same light as the subject. This need not mean the measurement should be made in exactly the same position as the subject, but obviously the greater the distance, the greater the uncertainty, with only a few exceptions.

 

A spot meter is best for this, as your hand should cover the metered area, but if you have a spot meter, then for mountain photography it's probably better to spot meter directly on the mountain.

 

Remember to compensate for your tan also...

[imaginator]

I do this all the time (and yes, get those looks once in a while) It doesn't matter much how far your hand is from the lens, but it is important to have the lens focused for the subject (don't bother trying to focus on your hand) This is because the actual f# of the lens changes with focus. Also be aware that some zooms are variable aperture, so you need to re-meter if you change zoom (focal length) So, set your zoom and focus for the intended subject, then meter the palm of your hand (hold it close enough to fill the frame) Also, angle your hand so it it somewhat between the source light and the lens (the source might be full sunlight, or in the open shade it would be the sky) Your hand is brighter than a gray card, so the meter tries to "underexpose"... adjust the settings about 1 stop (aperture or shutter speed) to compensate, or if your camera has manual film speed setting, you can adjust this to automatically compensate. This gets you close to an incident reading (measures the brightness of the light source, not the relfectance of the subject) and you still need to study the subject/scene and make choices to fine tune the exposure. Try using this method for awhile, but also do a regular meter reading to compare (great way to learn) You will soon see the difference between relfective and incident metering methods. Incident (or this variaiton of...) is very reliable (if you understand what you are photographing... or even if you don't) but you must be measuring the same light as the subject is in (no good doing this in the shade if the subject is in sunlight, or the other way around) To really make the best use of reflective metering, a good spot meter is needed so you can measure specific areas and evaluate the range of brightness. By the way, you can use exposure compensation to do the 1 stop difference when metering your hand, or do it all manually (my choice for sure) As with all metering, the fine tuning depends on the film, conditions, subject, and final use, like prints, scans or projection (slides) It's kind of ironic... the meter on my old Pentax K1000 is off about 1 stop so it already compenates for metering off my hand. Another older camera (Minolta) has excellent metering, and I can set the film speed, so I just set it to compensate the 1 stop (you should test your own camera and hand... 1 stop is a convenient approximation... you might need a bit more)

[freehueco]

(( with 100 ISO film))

 

Sharp shadow = 1/125 at f/16

Slightly fuzzy shadow= 1/125 at f/11

Fuzzy Shadow= 1/125 at f/8

No shadow= 1/125 at f/5.6

 

Yeah, it's that simple..

[jeffpolaski]

I've had success by metering the palm of my hand exposed to the primary light, then metering my palm flipped over into shade, and splitting the difference. It also gives me a feeling for the relative contrast in the current lighting.

[stan_murawski__jr.]

Using your hand to determine exposure. First focus on your subject. Place the palm of your hand in the same light as your subject. Then without refocusing, meter the palm of your hand and open up one stop. It doesn�t matter if your hand is Caucasian, African, Asian or any other color; the palm is one stop lighter than midtone. If you refocus, you change the length of the lens so the light reaching the film changes.

[christian deichert]

If you follow the Zone System, the palm of your hand can be placed into Zone VI (18% gray is generally placed in Zone V). Yeah, I'm saying the same thing as the other folks -- meter off your palm and then open up a stop -- but I'm surprised no one put it into terms of the Zone System.

[wildography]

You asked: "How to use a hand to determine exposure?"

 

Use your hand to hold a grey card... then take an exposure from that.

 

...sorry, I couldn't resist... good advice from above... I've also looked around and found mid tones in the ground, on trees, etc.