posted Thursday, February 17, 2022 at 11:00 AM EST
Whereas gentle meters is probably not the essential part of a photographer’s equipment like they as soon as had been, even with superior metering programs in digital cameras, gentle meters stay helpful for particular conditions. One motive why is {that a} gentle meter can measure incident gentle, whereas a digital camera’s metering system measures gentle mirrored by your topic and different parts of a scene. A lightweight meter can measure the exact quantity of sunshine falling in your topic, whereas a digital camera measures the sunshine that bounces off your topic. In lots of circumstances, the totally different approaches could ship related outcomes. Nonetheless, an incident gentle meter will extra usually be correct, whereas a digital camera’s metering system can sometimes come up brief.
Within the newest episode of his video sequence, ‘Exploring Images’ for Adorama TV, Mark Wallace invitations us into the studio to study extra about incident (gentle meter) versus reflective (digital camera TTL) metering. A cool facet of some gentle meters, such because the Sekonic L-858D-U Speedmaster Mild Meter that Wallace makes use of within the video beneath, is that it will probably carry out each incident and reflective gentle metering, which affords a helpful on-the-fly comparability.
What are some conditions the place reflective metering comes up brief? When photographing photos with plenty of white, like panorama photographs with snow or bridal portraits the place the topic is sporting a vibrant white gown, at default settings, digital camera metering programs meter for 18 p.c grey. The white in your scene will develop into a barely darker, muddier gentle grey. You’ll be able to overcome this with publicity compensation or an incident gentle meter. It is not solely pure white that journeys up reflective metering, although, it will probably additionally battle with black. At default settings, black is uncovered as lighter and extra like a darkish grey.
An incident gentle meter does not care in regards to the coloration of something in your scene and even what your topic is. It merely measures the quantity of sunshine that enters the meter’s lumisphere after which tells you correct publicity settings.
Are there conditions when reflective gentle metering is not simply pretty much as good or almost pretty much as good as an incident gentle meter, however higher? The reflective gentle meter software on the Sekonic gentle meter has a very small spot that it will probably use to measure mirrored gentle, which may be helpful when utilizing superior metering strategies such because the zone system. Suppose you do not need to understand how a lot gentle is hitting a portrait topic usually however need to know particularly the quantity of sunshine being mirrored by one among her cheeks, or her brow. No matter it could be, you should use TTL metering to measure that particular spot. You’ll be able to learn extra about metering and the zone system by testing this text by Cory Miller at Informal Photophile.
(Through Adorama)
