[Leica] Light metering with the Leica M9

[pklein at threshinc.com (Peter Klein)]

The only time I use a spot meter anymore is in the theater or concert 
hall, and occasionally for testing. The histogram is a wonderful light 
meter. It leaves no guesswork as to whether the area you're measuring is 
truly representative--if a highlight it going to blow or a shadow goes 
below zero, you know it. All you waste is a free test shot.

The MM is unique because it has no highlight headroom. So the spot meter 
will let you recalibrate yourself re. how you use the internal meter. 
But I suspect the histogram will be just as good, and eventually you 
will just know that in this or that high-contrast situation, you'll take 
your initial shot at minus 2/3 what the meter says, or something like 
that. And then, one test shot and a glance at the histogram will reveal 
whether that's correct or not.

Here's an M8 concert shot where the spot meter was truly necessary. The 
brightness range exceeded the sensor, I really needed to know what would 
fall where, and whether I could get the faces OK without losing anything 
important in the extremes. This was a live performance, so I didn't want 
to be messing with the histogram and disturbing the people around me 
during the music,.

Now, if I'd had the MM, this shot would be better. The shadowed faces 
are right at the lower limit for detail without too much noise. I'd have 
a bit more "footroom" in the shadows with an MM.

Too bad the MM is priced out of my socio-economic status... :-) :-(

--Peter

 > Me, too! I used the spot meter with the M9 until I learned I could trust
 > the meter. The MM is more picky and I might go back to the spot meter
 > until I can figure out how it is metering!
 >
 > Tina
 >
 > On Sun, Sep 2, 2012 at 8:12 PM, Paul Roark wrote:
 >
 > > I've, frankly, been surprised at how well the M9 meter works given the
 > > rather simply approach. I took my spot meter out on one trip and that
 > > was the end of bothering with it.
 > >
 > > Paul
 > > www.PaulRoark.com
 > >
 > >
 > -- Tina Manley, ASMP www.tinamanley.com