A Guest Post By Victor W69 About Metering

I was having a chat with Victor about metering over Flickrmail, and thought it might be of interest to readers who want to understand more about exposure and light - Victor uses a separate ambient light meter with his digital camera - fascinating stuff.

Per ardua ad astra Taken With Fujifilm S5700, Aperture Priority, F3.5, 1/800th, ISO 64, Focal Length 31mm, Hand-held

The conversation started when Victor commented on one of my pics and mentioned using a separate light meter, I had heard of this with film cameras but was fascinated to learn about how you could use one with Digital.

Here's what Victor had to say:

Hi Rob,
I read through your exposure techniques you were using again on your blog and I must say I'm pretty impressed.
Your knowledge of exposure range that your camera is capable of seems to have been gained admirably well. I noticed that you adjust for different images depending on the overall lighting conditions, the subject matter and the importance of the subjects contents. You also have the 'pre-visualisation' techniques required to 'know' what capabilities will be present to you post-processing.
Don't think I could honestly give you any pointers as you seem to have a better understanding of this than most people I know!

The biggest issue I have had with digital over film is the limited dynamic range. The 5700 has at best a 5 to 5.5 stop range, whereas I've been used to a 7 to 9 stop range on black and white film. There again all my clever 'expose for shadows, develop for highlights' film techniques was to produce the typical 'S' curve so that I could print the damn things on paper with a 5-6 stop range!
So I too had to learn new techniques to overcome this, until I realised I wasn't capturing a negative.

There was an old photographic expression I use, 'When is black cat not a black cat?'. The answer is 'When you photograph it'. If it's on a fence with a bright sky as the background, your cameras direct metering will expose for the sky leaving the cat as a silhouette, (underexposed). If the cat is sat in the shade the camera reads the shadow and now the cat can be picked out 'more grey', (overexposed). If the cat is sat on green grass, (in black and white this is 'middle' grey the camera will give a 'middle' exposure. So although the cat is black it's level of black will change.
That's more correct for 'auto' modes, (including semi-auto, shutter and aperture priority), because of the cameras 'direct' reading method.
So your method of adjusting using the cameras 'lightmeter' reading and checking the histogram is spot on!

Your objectiveness is what separates you from the crowd, you know when to adjust to make silhouettes a 'feature' and you already understand 'blown' highlights cannot be saved post processing, so you already 'adjust' the histogram before it's produced. Technical excellence!

Unfortunately, whatever exposure reading method you use takes time. Fine for a 'well thought out, tripod supported, spot-meter read, all the time in the world shot', but not great for 'grab' shots.
Most of my shots are 'grab' shots, typical family/friends snapshots, (I never upload them, no matter how good, 'personal only shots'). I know they won't stand there whilst I measure every bit of available light around and you lose the spontaneity!

This is where I use my separate light meter - I use an incident light measurement so that I know how much light is available. (Whether this be the sky, light through a window or household lighting.) Then use this as my 'base exposure'. Experience tells me how many stops up or down I need for the capture, (is my subject in front of the light or lit by it?), or for adjusting the shutter speed in relation to the aperture I've selected. That way I've already set the camera up, (and the initial reading only takes a second or two), and I 'grab' as many shots as I like without worrying 'will it be alright?'.
If I don't have my lightmeter, but we're outside, I point the camera at that lovely grass I'm stood on. (From earlier - 'middle grey'!), and use that as my 'base exposure'.

This has always stood me good ground for all my film years. The only thing from digital I had to work around was the limited dynamic range. All this gives me my middle exposure, my experience had to grow in as far as would the highlights 'blow' and will the shadow detail be visible. That's where the pre-visualisation of post-processing had to be learned. Also, 'middle' exposures showed up another trait of digital - colour saturation, the colours just come out too flat. Fuji to the rescue - Finepix Chrome!

Does this sound familiar?

I know I could've given you a simple answer Rob, 'you're already doing it', but I hope the explanation helps.

You know when you've been doing photography for long enough - you can pretty much 'guesstimate' the exposure without a lightmeter!!

Best regards,

Victor

What a great post - thanks for the comments Victor, cleared up a few things for me, and I think I'll be looking out for a light-meter at the car boot!

Thanks again, Rob.

Comments

[Victor]

Thanks Rob!!

Nice to think that my email to you would be of use to others and sharing it.
Well done on the good work again.

Best regards,
Victor

[Rob_Nunn]

Thanks for letting me share it Victor,

Cheers, Rob.