Do You Use A Light Meter Outside The Studio And For Non-Flash Work?

I'm curious to see how people use their light meters. We all use them in the studio and for shoots involving strobes and flash but do you take your meter with you when you are going out to shoot mountains, landscapes, the beach, wildlife, etc?

Do you use a 1 degree reflective spot meter instead of your camera's internal metering system? Assuming you are close enough to measure incident light falling on a subject, do you take the time to do that or do just go with the reflective metering in the camera?

Since we all learn how to interpret the camera's metering system and apply EC to much of what we do, does having a meter in the field make this process a simpler one with more accurate results?

Any insight and information would be appreciated.

If I can use incident meter, I will. If I need to use 1 degree spotmeter, I will. If I have to use in-camera meter -- because speed of photo op does not permit more careful metering techniques; or I cannot get the incident meter to lie within the same type of light as my subject; or because I do not necessarily care about precisision 'placement' of exposure for certain aspects of the scene (cf. Ansel Adams The Negative) -- I will.

Snapshooting, I rely on the in-camera meter in Partial (I would use Spot, but I have an 'ancient' 20D!). 'Serious shooting' mandates more careful and predictable result than the in-camera meter provides in Evaluative mode.

Thanks Wilt. When you do take the time to use the light meter do you ultimately get a 'better' exposure than if you just used your smarts and the camera's metering?

TMR Design wrote in post #2917880
Thanks Wilt. When you do take the time to use the light meter do you ultimately get a 'better' exposure than if you just used your smarts and the camera's metering?

The 30D has a spot meter built-in. I'm not sure how much different the exposures would be between pictures taken with each spot meter unless one or the other was way off in calibration.

Hi Leo,

Yes the 30D does have a spot meter. How does this spot meter (unsure of the angle of coverage) compare to the 1 degree spot meter of a Sekonic meter?

I guess the real question is this.
If you're not taking incident readings is there really a need for using an external light meter for reflective readings?

TMR Design wrote in post #2917946
Hi Leo,

Yes the 30D does have a spot meter. How does this spot meter (unsure of the angle of coverage) compare to the 1 degree spot meter of a Sekonic meter?

I guess the real question is this.
If you're not taking incident readings is there really a need for using an external light meter for reflective readings?

In most of my outdoors shooting situations, taking incident readings is very impractical for me so I don't need my light meter for that. And my cameras already have spot metering built-in so I don't need my light meter for that either.

The actual angle of coverage of the spot meter on the camera varies with the lens being used. It covers 3.8% of the viewfinder but you can't relate that to the 1 degree spot meter until you introduce the lens being used into the equation.

I could have probably used my calculator to figure out when lens would give the same spot meter coverage as a 1 degree light meter but it was more fun using a camera and zoom lens. Just "eye-balling" it, with a focal length of about 175mm, the spot metering circle on my 30D covered the same area as the 1 degree spot metering circle on my L-558 light meter.

i use my light meter when im shooting with my view camera or any 120 work. so, yes.

PacAce wrote in post #2918012
The actual angle of coverage of the spot meter on the camera varies with the lens being used. It covers 3.8% of the viewfinder but you can't relate that to the 1 degree spot meter until you introduce the lens being used into the equation

I could have probably used my calculator to figure out when lens would give the same spot meter coverage as a 1 degree light meter but it was more fun using a camera and zoom lens. Just "eye-balling" it, with a focal length of about 175mm, the spot metering circle on my 30D covered the same area as the 1 degree spot metering circle on my L-558 light meter.

Trying to approximate a one degree spot meter would take an 225mm lens on APS-C using the 3.8% area spotmeter.

A one degree spotmeter sees 1.75' wide area at a distance of 100'

Wilt wrote in post #2919899
Trying to approximate a one degree spot meter would take an 225mm lens on APS-C using the 3.8% area spotmeter.

A one degree spotmeter sees 1.75' wide area at a distance of 100'

You're right, Wilt. I just redid my "eye-balling" test using a circular target and ended up with 200mm on my 100-400 lens, give or take a notch, and that's close enough to the 225mm you calculated.

The 30D actually has a spotmeter circle of 3.5% of viewfinder area instead of 3.8% which I wrote in my previous post (the 3.8% is for the 1DmkII). And by my calculation, using 3.5%, I ended up with approximately 215mm.

Thanks Leo and Wilt. So based on all this, will there be a different metered exposure if I was taking a 1 degree reflective spot meter reading of an object 100 ft. away with my Sekonic than if I took that reading with the 30D's spot metering mode?

TMR Design wrote in post #2922427
Thanks Leo and Wilt. So based on all this, will there be a different metered exposure if I was taking a 1 degree reflective spot meter reading of an object 100 ft. away with my Sekonic than if I took that reading with the 30D's spot metering mode?

...if you didn't have a 200-225mm lens mounted, Yes! The 30D meter would see more, or see less, than the 1 degree spotmeter, and the reading would been affected by that. But assuming the same area of coverage, NO. (I am, for the sake of this discussion, ignoring the fact that different brands of meters can be calibrated differently, so it is possible with three different brands of meters aimed at the same 18% gray card, to get three different readings!)

I have 2 meters, my most versatile (and largest/heaviest) meter is a Gossen Luna Pro F. But if I'm out and about outside and using ambient light I carry a (lighter/smaller) Sekonic L-398. I just almost always want an external light meter with me.