handheld meter

[msvadi]

Because of the DRebel resptrictive metering options I'm thinking about getting a handheld meter. I wonder how many people here have it and find it useful. Can somebody recommend good and not too expensive one?

[Belmondo]

I have a Pentax SpotMeter I use occasionally when I'm not comfortable with what the camera is telling me. The more comfortable (and trusting) I become with the in-camera metering, the less I use it. In fact, it hasn't been out of the bag for months now.

Sorry Ansel. It's easier to bracket.

[scottbergerphoto]

One of the most popular, that also has flash metering, is the Sekonic L358.
You can add a Pocket Wizard module for $25 that will fire your strobes wirelessly for metering with a PW setup.
Scott

[Vegas Poboy]

I'll have to back up Scott & say the L-358 it's good and inexpensive.
Only down fall is it does not have an spot meter in it. But I use the the cameras & bracket for those type of shots.

[msvadi]

Thanks!

[Motorsports Photo]

Shouldnt a handheld meter be obsolete since you can check your image right after taking it to make sure exposure was OK?

-Pete

[PhotosGuy]

Shouldnt a handheld meter be obsolete since you can check your image right after taking it to make sure exposure was OK?

Good point! It's not like you're still using film!
:D

[DaveG]

Because of the DRebel resptrictive metering options I'm thinking about getting a handheld meter. I wonder how many people here have it and find it useful. Can somebody recommend good and not too expensive one?

It seems to me that unless you buy a flash meter and use it to set up lighting ratios, then a hand held meter has very little use with digital cameras.

An incident meter, or a spot meter was very important when we were all in the prediction game. "THIS should happen." "THAT should happen." and with film we needed tools that would give us the best guess for the "THIS" and the "THAT".

But now we are in the review game. At best a meter will get you close. And the meter in your dRebel is more than fine enough to do that. Then you can use the histogram to fine tune the exposure.

Let's make something clear. An exposure comes down to one shutterspeed and one aperture. And you can over expose, under expose or expose "right on". For some reason some of us think that there is a more subtle approach to this and an incident - or spot meter for that matter - will get them a better exposure. How can it? Review the histogram, make a judgement, and bias the exposure (or not) based on that.

[Motorsports Photo]

At best a meter will get you close. And the meter in your dRebel is more than fine enough to do that. Then you can use the histogram to fine tune the exposure.

The meter in my D30 and 10D seem to be about the same...... and not very accurate! The metering in my old A2E was MUCH better. I have to check my histogram often or just use the camera on manual to get the best exposures.

At least someone agrees that a handheld meter is kinda silly for digital work!

-Pete

[Ballen Photo]

Shouldnt a handheld meter be obsolete since you can check your image right after taking it to make sure exposure was OK?

-Pete
For motorsports (pun intended) I dont think you'll need an external meter, but.........
You're still going to want to have a meter if you plan on setting up and using studio lights unless you want to do the trial and error thing while your model is getting bored with all the testing going on. We ARE talking manual settings on our cameras for use with studio flash, right?
A good meter that reads flash, both corded and non-corded, as well as incident cant hurt a thing. What about creativity with your lights? Dont you think a meter might help here too?
As for a recommendation for a good INEXPENSIVE meter, don't overlook Polaris flash meters that have had independent testers find it accurate to within 1/10 of a stop.
.......Bruce

[AliasMoze]

I do mostly portrait work, including flash metering, and I find my handheld meter indispensable. I have a Sekonic 308, which does incident and flash. It does reflective, but that function isn't very useful.

[scottbergerphoto]

I did a few weekends of just lanscape work in an area with alot of trees and fields. The lighting was very variable. In some scenes the lighting varied from dark shadows to bright sun. A hand held meter allows you to meter each area you are interested in exposing properly. You may decide to favor one area over another, look for a mid ground, etc. I find it's much easier to do this with a hand held meter then the camera meter, especially since the 10D doesn't have a spot meter. I have the 1 degree spot finder for the L358 and recently bought the Sekonic L558.
A histogram is good at showing general exposure, but unless you're an expert in converting tones you see into points on a bar graph, it doesn't tell you if you've properly exposed the areas in a scene most important to you.
So, I guess I'm saying that hand held meters are still important for ambient lighting and not just flash.
If you want proof, borrow someone's meter and compare the readings on the meter to what the camera tells you, corrected for tonality(zone). See which gives you a better picture and in which situations. A meter is a tool just like any other tool. You have to know not only how to use it but when to use it as well.
Scott

[DaveG]

I did a few weekends of just lanscape work in an area with alot of trees and fields. The lighting was very variable. In some scenes the lighting varied from dark shadows to bright sun. A hand held meter allows you to meter each area you are interested in exposing properly. You may decide to favor one area over another, look for a mid ground, etc. I find it's much easier to do this with a hand held meter then the camera meter, especially since the 10D doesn't have a spot meter. I have the 1 degree spot finder for the L358 and recently bought the Sekonic L558.
A histogram is good at showing general exposure, but unless you're an expert in converting tones you see into points on a bar graph, it doesn't tell you if you've properly exposed the areas in a scene most important to you.
So, I guess I'm saying that hand held meters are still important for ambient lighting and not just flash.
If you want proof, borrow someone's meter and compare the readings on the meter to what the camera tells you, corrected for tonality(zone). See which gives you a better picture and in which situations. A meter is a tool just like any other tool. You have to know not only how to use it but when to use it as well.
Scott

Or you could just bracket the exposure.

Remember all you are doing is over or under exposing. There is no tonality control here at all. Tonality in Zone was controlled by negative processing ("Exposure controls density, development controls contrast.")

Now I'm no expert on reading a Histogram either. But I know that when I look at one I don't want the mountain on the far left or far right.

Assuming that I can't change the subject (adding a fill card type of thing) all I can do is change the exposure so the mountain is more or less in the middle. After awhile I expect we will all learn to fine tune the mountain placement ("A little right of centre ...") so that it falls where we want it. But I have no doubt that if you follow an incident meter's exposure "instructions" then your mountain placement will be wrong as often as your camera's meter will.

[G3]

If you do weddings, a hand-held can be real handy. You don't always have a lot of time to check the histogram after every shot and bracketing eats up a LOT of CF card space. So you can take a reading of the ambient light in the altar area, for instance, and that gives you a better starting reference point than trying to use the in-camera meter. Then you check the difference between the hand-held reading and the camera's reading and set exposure compensation accordingly.

It is also very nice to have for metering flash for portraits.

[scottbergerphoto]

DaveG,
Let me give you an example. On a bright sunny day, if i want to properly expose a person's face sitting under a tree in the shade and still have some sunlit oblects in the scene, I have to make sure that my exposure is based on the light intensity at the face and not on the overall sunny conditions. I can do this with a spot meter, using a zoom lens to zoom in to the face and take a reading, or walking over with a hand held meter and take an incident reading.
When I wrote about tones I mean the following, when you take a reflected light reading off a caucasian face, that requires a 1/2 to 1 stop increase in exposure over what a spot or reflected meter(camera) might say. If that face is of a black person, the correction would be in the other direction. I use a modified 5 zone system based on the tones:
72% white - 36% light grey - 18% grey -9% dark grey - 4.5% black
Incident meters are less affected by this, but require a little correction in the opposite direction.
Regards,
Scott

[DaveG]

DaveG,
Let me give you an example. On a bright sunny day, if i want to properly expose a person's face sitting under a tree in the shade and still have some sunlit oblects in the scene, I have to make sure that my exposure is based on the light intensity at the face and not on the overall sunny conditions. I can do this with a spot meter, using a zoom lens to zoom in to the face and take a reading, or walking over with a hand held meter and take an incident reading.
When I wrote about tones I mean the following, when you take a reflected light reading off a caucasian face, that requires a 1/2 to 1 stop increase in exposure over what a spot or reflected meter(camera) might say. If that face is of a black person, the correction would be in the other direction. I use a modified 5 zone system based on the tones:
72% white - 36% light grey - 18% grey -9% dark grey - 4.5% black
Incident meters are less affected by this, but require a little correction in the opposite direction.
Regards,
Scott

The only problem with that example is that you are going to blow out the sun lit highlights. You describe a scene that would require a tremendous latitude from the digital capture (or slide film) and they just don't have that capability. There's not enough latitude with digital captures to allow this "expose for the shadow" technique, at least under the extremely contrasty situation you've described.

You and your incident meter are predicting that you can cover the highlight and the shadow; and I'm checking - in the field - to see that it IS covered. Your technique would work for B&W and certainly for colour neg, but it wouldn't for slide film nor digital capture. With digital you pretty much have to expose for the highlights and then trust that you can fix the shadows in Photoshop.

You may well get the "correct" theoretical exposure trusting the ambient meter; but the digital media just won't allow you this exposure. That's why I'd want to check the histogram.

[msvadi]

Let's make something clear. An exposure comes down to one shutterspeed and one aperture. And you can over expose, under expose or expose "right on". For some reason some of us think that there is a more subtle approach to this and an incident - or spot meter for that matter - will get them a better exposure. How can it? Review the histogram, make a judgement, and bias the exposure (or not) based on that.

Thanks for all your comments guys, it turned out to be a nice discussion :)

I agree that digital changes things compared to film. We have histograms, we have instant feedback. That's why I asked that question. I was wondering how many digital photographers still use handheld meters. I see now that quite a lot ;)

I do think that exposure is more subtle than the statement quoted above. A good exposure is not just one point but rather a range. Of course, one can adjust exposure during conversion and post-processing. But, I think that best possible quality can be achived only with correct in camera exposure.

Yes there is an instant feedback and histogram and I do check it all the time. However, again there is no one right histogram. I think that a spot meter is very important for complicated light conditions. I just have to decide if it is $250 important (the price of L-358 at B&H) ;)

[Ballen Photo]

I just have to decide if it is $250 important (the price of L-358 at B&H) ;)

Looking at your photos on Byte photo, I notice you take quite a few people portraits, so if I had to guess, at a pinch, I'd say you're leaning heavily towards getting the meter. Of course this might distract from the spontenaity of shots like "A Dream", which you managed quite well without the meter. Decisions, decisions. :D
.........Bruce

[msvadi]

I really want to have a spot meter ;) So, unless Canon releases a magic firmware upgrade that will produce a spot meter in its DSLRs (which is not very likely), I'll be getting one. It's not going to happen very soon, I still have to recover from that shock of sudden purchase of a DRebel and 2 lens ;)

Thanks for checking my gallery. By the way, regarding that picture "A Dream", I managed to bracket 6 exposures before my daughter woke up. In addition, I had to spend some time with photoshop correcting for noise in shadows. I think I should get some basic lighting equipment before I get a meter ;)