How To Use Hand Meters
Pentax 67, 75mm lens,
Fuji Velvia 50, Minolta auto meter IIIF, Bogen tripod and ball head.
Unlike built-in camera meters which read
light reflected from the subject, hand held incident meters read the light falling on the
subject. All built-in camera meters are reflected light meters.
Centerweighted, spot, or
multisegment meters read the light reflected from the subject. Camera meters work fine
most of the time, but they can be fooled by the color or texture of your subject,
resulting in over or underexposures. Reflected light meters are also more difficult to use
when photographing backlit subjects. You could easily loose all details. Even frontlit
subjects which are very bight or dark can fool reflected meters.
Incident meters measure
the light falling on the subject and are not affected by the subject lightness or
darkness, or its color. Black is recorded as black, and white records as white. To use an
incident light meter, point its plastic dome so it is in the same light as your subject.
The best way to use a hand meter is to hold the meter in front of your subject and aiming
its dome at the camera. Once you take your reading, transfer the shutters speed/f-stop
reading to your camera. Some hand meters include a mode for flash photography. This is a
great feature to look for in a hand meter if you do a lot of flash photography such as
studio, modeling, or even close-ups. To take a flash reading, point the meter at the
camera and fire the test button on your flash. The correct f-stop will be displayed on the
meter depending on your camera's flash sync.
MINOLTA Auto Meter VF Photo Exposure Light Meter
There are dozens of accessories for hand
meters including spot attachments (useful if your camera doesn't have a spot meter),
close-up, microscope, or attachments for calculating printing time in the darkroom. I
always carry my incident meter with me and try to use it whenever possible. It is very
useful for quick and accurate readings when there is no middle tone to read, or when I'm
photographing very light or very dark subjects. For the image above, I used incident
reading to get proper exposure in the early morning fog.
Recommended reading:
Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or
Digital Camera
More than 100 vivid, graphic comparison pictures illustrate every point in this classic and can help any photographer maximize the creative impact of his or her exposure decisions. Peterson stresses the importance of metering the subject for a starting exposure and then explains how to use various exposure meters and different kinds of lighting. The book contains lessons on each element of the triangle and how it relates to the other two in terms of depth of field, freezing and blurring action, and shooting in low light or at night. A section on special techniques explores such options as deliberate under-and over-exposures, how to produce double exposures, bracketing, shooting the moon, and the use of filters. Understanding Exposure demonstrates that there are always creative choices about how to expose a picture - and that the decision is up to the photographer, not the camera.