anyone here using a handheld light meter with their DSLR???

Hi everyone,

reason for asking: I have just purchased the Sekonic L-358 Flash Master light meter, and after just two days, here are my impressions:

1) I should have done this years ago!

2) When in doubt, refer to number 1 above


Seriously, if you have ever thought about buying an incident light meter to help you meter light more accurately, DO IT! You won't regret it!

BTW, I use mine mainly with the D30 (but will obviously also use it with the EOS 33 when I shoot slide film). A friend of mine was just given (lucky bastard!!!) some studio strobes, and we had a bunch of fun using them with the D30 and the L-358...

I still use an old Pentax 1 degree spot meter for difficult situations with my D60. I've had the meter since the 70's and my Zone System days, and am very glad to have it with the D60

How accurate have you found the D30 in regard to the meter's recommendations? Are they turning out as if you were shooting film or are you compensating a bit for the camera?

Chris

I am using a Sekonic as well and have for years. I find it works great with my D30 and D60 and is very accurate. I have tested my Canon 35MM, Mamiya medium format, and the digitals, and they are all about the same and use the same settings for all three.

Stick with what works.

When using a light meter, does it matter what lens you have on your camera?

Excellent question. My D30's meter gives very different results with my various lenses and it is looking through the actual lens. A hand-held meter will suggest a perfect setting based on some industry standard that was not necessarily a high priority on my D30, not to mention focus and flash sync, etc. (Wow, what a catty statement that was, Chris. Somebody stop me!)

I am very encouraged by several "yes" votes so don't give up on me yet.

Doesn't matter which lens is mounted. An incident meter is handheld, measures how much light is falling on the subject rath than reflected and TTL.

Chris,

today I shot some flowers and bees, and the D30 was off by about 2/3 of a stop compared to the Sekonic L-358. The D30 tended to overexpose and blow out the bright highlights, which tended to be the actual flower petals. They were small, and didn't fill enough of the frame to look "important" to the D30 metering. The Sekonic incident meter was DEAD-ON! Funnily enough, I probably wouldn't have noticed it, or wouldn't have regarded as such a big problem by looking at the LCD alone, but once downloaded and viewed on the computer, I'm glad I used the handheld meter...

Of course, there might be another case where the light reflected off a bright object will tend to make the D30 underexpose an image. That is the beauty of incident light metering, though - you don't measure the light reflecting off of the subject and through the lens, you measure the light falling ON the subject!

Incident metering is great for black cats sitting on white cars and such...

Silly question, but which model Sekonic do you use?

OK folks, these are examples of what I was talking about. Remember, NONE of these shots had any levels or curves adjustment, the ONLY thing I did was a slight sharpening.

The first is a full frame resized for the web:

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

OK you lot, any comments?

DPreview would not let me off the hook that easy!

I use a Sekonic 408 for tricky lighting.

My D30 consistently underexposed in bright light, burning out highlights. The D60 has the same tendency.

I find that the meter is off by 1/2 stop or more, even when I use exposure compensation. On the D30, egrets would burn out and get an annoying blue halo on the highlights.

If you use the LCD to preview the image right away, the display will blink where highlights were burned out. If you forget, the histogram will also be a dead giveaway. There will be lots of points near the high end of the histogram.

Cheers,

Mitch

RUDI

I can see that summer is on the way! You have popped-up with another set of beautiful shots.

Next summer, I will try metering for the G2. I still have the hand held meter (a fairly simple but effective one-- I forget the brand) that I used with my SLR.

Something else that I would like you to keep your eye on. It is the way that digital renders a sunlit scene. You see, I have the sense that while the G2 explodes with color, it may not render a certain quality of light that we experience on a summer day. What I am trying to say is that the photos themselves can be so beautiful, that it is easy to overlook their rendering of the yellowness (?) in the sun. Having said that I must admit that I cannot recall if I felt the same way when using film.

Again great shots. Smart idea re metering. I could use an F16-22 on the G2!

HOWIE

Howie,

good to hear from you!

I think that your handheld meter should still be more accurate than the G2, if used properly. Doesn't matter how sophisticated the meter, it is the photo cell that does all the work, the "sophistication" is in the display... and it really doesn't matter whether it's digital or an analogue needle, as long as you know what you're doing.

In regards to the light temperature on summer afternoons, I find that the Canon digital cameras tend to have a slight blue cast when used with AWB (the 1D might be the exception to this, I'm not sure). If you want to capture the true colours (or as close as you're gonna get), your best bet would be to shoot using Custom WB and in RAW mode, to capture the higher colour depth available in RAW.

And yes, summer's on the way!

How do you an "incident" meter when the bee is on the flower?!? Doesn't that scare the bee away?!?