Should I consider a light meter?

Just wondering if a light meter would be of any benefit for natural light portrait use or do you think the camera's meter is sufficient? I realized they measure the light differently, incident vs reflective.

Thank you!

It seems very old-school to use a light meter. The sensor of the camera knows best about exposure. Expose to the right and watch for blinkies.

Or are you measuring lighting ratios?

No, no ratios. I would only use it to determine correct exposure for my subject (iso, ss, and aperture).

I can work far faster and more accurately using a handheld meter than I can with the camera's meter. Most of my use of the handheld meter is with it in incident mode - something the camera's meter simply cannot do. I've been using a handheld meter the same way since the mid 1960s so that's burned into my brain a bit.

Another thing that the metering system in the camera cannot do is measure light from flash sources while my handheld meter does that easily. Most of my flash work is in full manual mode.

I find a handheld incident light meter can be a very useful tool in some workflows. I very frequently use mine when working in a space just to get a better idea of how the light changes in various spots. (I often use it in arenas to walk around the play area before hand to kind of mentally map out where the overhead lights cast bright zones and shadowed zones.

Also handy for dealing with flash as already stated.

Another useful thing is that they're good to have on hand if you ever decide to get a cheap old film camera to play with.

Unless all your subjects are grey zombies, your camera simply cannot properly expose for the nuances in skin tone and lighting conditions. So, yes, use a handheld meter, take a reading, plug that into your camera and worry about other things like composition and posing, as the exposures will be accurate and consistent 99% of the time. I'd buy a meter that has a 1º spot meter, which comes in handy for tricky lighting conditions (the 1% of the time) and other kinds of photography such as landscape.

Thank you SkipD and Luckless! Is there a model you might recommend that would serve my purposes (determining exposure) and not break the bank?

Thanks Alveric! Same question to you....a recommended model?

Sekonic L758-DR. Yes, it's not cheap, but it's worth every penny.

Alternatively, and if cost is an issue, you might want to go with a used Sekonic L-358, but it doesn't have the spot meter (though you can buy the add-on, albeit said add-on will only be a 4º spot).

Alveric - Thanks for the rec...but that one is a bit pricier than I can do at this time....but no doubt it's worth it.

Alveric wrote in post #18091906
Unless all your subjects are grey zombies, your camera simply cannot properly expose for the nuances in skin tone and lighting conditions.

Of course it can. All you need is the right aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. It doesn't matter how you determine the exposure settings, whether by hand-held meter or camera meter or chimping.

Archibald wrote in post #18091912


Of course it can. All you need is the right aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. It doesn't matter how you determine the exposure settings, whether by hand-held meter or camera meter or chimping.

What I mean is that the dumb computer which wants to see everything in 18% gray won't be able to tell the difference by itself. YOU need to compensate manually.

Sure, if you want to forego a lightmeter, you can set the camera to spot metering, get within a foot of your subject and fill the frame with his cheek, then meter off that patch and plug in the camera-suggested values, then back away, compose and make the photo. If you have developed the ability to gauge tonal values, you'll be able to dial in the compensation for the skin tone (average white skin, +1 stop; black skin, -1 stop; and so forth); but there are whiter white skins, and swarthier dark skins, so the compensation won't always be +1 or -1. What can be easier than simple place a meter below the subject's chin and press a button?

I do have one, the Sekonic 408 with a 5 degree spot meter, ambient meter, and flash meter. Is used for my medium format film photography. The flash metering allows me to dial down my flash power setting in a particular shooting situation. I don't use TTL speedlite. A light meter allows you to visualize your shots, judging the lighting condition, without ever firing a single shot from your camera. That's great. If your light meter can do flash meter...that's even better, You don't need to fire couple of shots with the flash on in order to guess your settings. All you need to do is to trigger the flash to fire one burst and you know how much power you need to light up your subject. You just increase your flash power output by stops in order to determine the flash to ambient power ratios.

I find a lighter meter with flash metering is more useful than a meter without flash metering. If you shoot indoor events or using bounce flash to light up your indoor environment, the flash metering can determine how much light fall offs you are getting with a particular exposure settings and flash power outputs. Reading the histogram and judging your exposure through the LCD screen aren't always accurate.

Oh, I picked up my Sekonic 408 at Robert's Camera for $125, used. That's no need to buy new though.

If you meter your subject in ambient light with an in-camera meter, you run risk of making actor Morgan Freeman appear to be as light skinned as Jennifer Lopez and also Gwyneth Paltrow will be as dark skinned as JLo, too. That is where a grey card comes into play in metering...eliminates the varability of subject brightness, so that a portrait sitter will be portrayed darker or lighter than midtome, same as their inherent complexion, when it is read with a reflected light meter. Same' inherent tone' capture is accomplished with a handheld incident meter.

ETTR may get better alotment of 4096 tones into lower level zones, better utilitizing them without clipping at the high end, but the true deficiency of ETTR is that you do not get things captured 'at their inherent tonality' necessarily, but artifically bright.

If you value faithful capture of inherent tonal brightness, get a grey card or an incident meter. A grey card does nothing to make metering of flash exposure more time efficient, but it does save you a lot of money for ambient/constant light exposure.

Actually a rather important factor to consider is that a light meter itself won't really improve your photography over the in-camera meter in most cases. It is a tool that can make workflows more efficient and easier. Learning to use the palm of your hand (Assuming you don't wildly swing in skin tone from season to season) or a grey card and the in-camera meter is probably the best choice cost wise, and I would argue is the best choice for learning to read and use light.

It is also very hard to forget your hand at home when you go out shooting. Or at least it is for most people.

I use a Gossen DigiFlash 2, and would argue that it is almost a 'perfect' little light meter. I just wish that it were half the price it is, and that it actually worked the way I expected it to. It has a wonderfully simple interface to use: Press the big button, read the EV, spin the disk to see all your options. And all in a package that fits neatly in the palm of your hand while being light enough to hang round your neck without worrying about it. It is lighter than a pocket watch.

Its only drawback is that they apparently changed the actual functional design after they made the visual design. All the buttons for settings/modes just work in one direction, which makes changing things a bit more of a pain than it should. Going from ISO 100 to 400, and hold too long/tap once too often? Well, time to circle around through ISO 3200 and then start from the beginning again. The button has left/right arrows on it, but isn't actually a rocker/three-way button sadly.