Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/04/17
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>Just read with interest the comments on relfective versus incident
>light reading/metering. Having been a long time believer in hand
>held meters I just would like to throw my experiences into the pot.
>For starters, if you have never tried or are skeptical of the value
>of incident vs reflective, try this. Beg or borrow a decent
>*calibrated* hand held meter. Arm your self with your camera with
>its built-in reflective meter. Go out and photograph a number of
>different color and substance items; dark wood, shiny metal, you get
>the idea. Expose two shots, one with the in camera meter and then
>the incident meter, pointed toward the camera in the same spot as
>the subject. Now the beauty of incident metering is you don't have
>to be in the exact same spot. Just a location that has the same
>amount of light falling on the location as the subject. Experiment
>number 2; take a reading from both the subject's location and a
>separate location. This would be done assuming you could not get
>close to the intended subject. Compare the readings. They will be
>the same. To address the issue of the black cat and the white on
>white dress or the sands at White Sands National Monument. An
>incident meter reading will give an accurate exposure, leaving the
>cat black and the dress white and White Sands (not really sand) a
>rendition of what you saw. Would you bracket? Maybe. Remember the
>basic rule of all built-in reflective meters, they're calibrated to
>18% greyscale, like a greyscale card. Black will be grey, snow will
>be grey, a white dress will be grey. The main thing is experiment
>and see for yourself the difference in reading variations, shooting
>the same subject. I have 3 hand helds, and use them no matter what
>system I'm shooting that day; EOS, 3s, EOS 1N RS, Nikon FE, Leica
>M6s TTL or my Pentax 67s even though they have TTL prisms (for macro
>work)and my Yashica Mat 124 when I want to shoot square. If you
>don't have a hand held, at least get a small grey card to carry and
>meter off of that in difficult situations.
>I shoot almost exclusively chromes and they leave little room for
>metering error. Dave
Not exactly handheld, but the Sinarsix system does the metering
right; handheld meters are just 'waving your hand at the scenery'.
Spot metering with the spot always in the right place. Helps you when
each shot costs $12+.
Action shots are optional.
- --
* Henning J. Wulff
/|\ Wulff Photography & Design
/###\ mailto:henningw@archiphoto.com
|[ ]| http://www.archiphoto.com
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