Where is it best to meter for sunrise and sunsets?

Question

I can never get nice silhouettes and appropriate exposures for sunrise and sunset. How should I meter for this?

Asked by Noel M

Answer

Its near impossible to balance the foreground and the horizon/ambient when shooting into the sun without lighting modifiers, so you have to pick a target.

If your target is to expose the sunset correctly, then expose for the sky - a non-white, non sun patch close to your composition, and recompose using those settings.

If your target is to expose the foreground correctly, well, thats easy, expose the foreground as normal :)

If your target is to create a silhouette in the foreground, then you might try exposing for the sky, taking a test shot, and using your view/histogram controls to ensure you have a large chunk of black in the photo (tall peak on the left side). Alternatively, you could set your exposure points to center point, expose on the foreground silhouette, then close down the shutter until your light meter is buried, -2 or better.

Answered by reuscam

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How do I effectively photograph when the sun is in the frame?

Question

I have been trying to get a good shot out of direct sunlight but my shots just turn out dark, even if I set my shutter speed to the 1000-4000 range at ISO 200. Another odd thing is that even if my shutter speed is below the thousands range, they still turn out dark when sunlight is involved.

What settings can I use to remedy this? I am using a Canon EOS 50 film camera, and I usually use ISO 200 films. I am in Manual Mode. What shutter speed-aperture combination can you suggest. What about ISO, or even lenses?

I have no means to scan the photos, so I guess I will just describe one of them in detail:

The picture is composed such that the camera is pointed at the sunlight, and a person is at the left side of the photo. The sun has just risen, about 7 am, and a little above the horizon. The output image is dark, so is the person, but the sunlight is beaming radiantly, forming some sort of a huge ball of light, and everything that's near the camera (the person, the plants around the person) is dark, and the sky is a bit dark too.

Asked by Ygam

Answer

How are you metering the photograph? There is no one aperture/shutter-speed/iso combo for any situation, you either need to get an accurate meter reading or 'guess'. When I say 'guess' I mean use the Sunny 16 rule which is:

In daylight, the appropriate shutter speed at f16 is 1/ISO

So if your ISO is 200 and your aperture is f16 then your shutter speed is 1/200 (or 1/250), from this you can figure out any other aperture/shutter-speed combo 'guess': f11 would be 1/400, f8 would be 1/800 etc.

Given this starting point you can hold the camera up and get a meter reading to see how far off the guess is and adjust accordingly by looking at the meter in the view finder and changing your aperture/shutter-speed until it reads a good exposure. You may also want to try changing metering modes to be tighter (spot) or wider (matrix) which has a pretty good discussion going here:

Rule of thumb for metering? When best to use Multi-Zone/Matrix, Spot, or Center-Weight?

EDIT (given the OP's edit):

The problem most certainly is metering. The camera is metering for the scene which sounds like its 90% The Sun and 10% your subject, you need to meter for your subject. You can accomplish this in a variety of ways:

-You could switch to spot metering and take a meter reading off your subject first and then use that for the photograph

-You could get really close to your subject and meter their chest/face such that they fill up most of the frame for metering and then go back to your original position and use that reading.

-You could look around near you for something in a similar amount of light (the ground in front of or behind your feet) and take a reading and use that

-Get more light on your subject somehow

-etc

Answered by Shizam

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How do I effectively photograph direct sunlight?

Question

I have been trying to get a good shot out of direct sunlight but my shots just turn out dark, even if I set my shutter speed to the 1000-4000 range at ISO 200. Another odd thing is that even if my shutter speed is below the thousands range, they still turn out dark when sunlight is involved.

What settings can I use to remedy this? I am using a Canon EOS 50 film camera, and I usually use ISO 200 films. I am at Manual Mode. What shutter speed-aperture combination can you suggest. ISO? or even lenses?

EDIT: with no means to scan the photos, I guess I will just describe one of them in detail.

The picture is composed such that the camera is pointed at the sunlight, and a person is at the left side of the photo. The sun has just risen, about 7 am, and a little above the horizon. The output image is dark, so is the person, but the sunlight is beaming radiantly, forming some sort of a huge ball of light, and everything that's near the camera (the person, the plants around the person) is dark, and the sky is a bit dark too.

If that did not help, I'll try to scan it :P

Asked by Ygam

Answer

How are you metering the photograph? There is no one aperture/shutter-speed/iso combo for any situation, you either need to get an accurate meter reading or 'guess'. When I say 'guess' I mean use the Sunny 16 rule which is:

In daylight, the appropriate shutter speed at f16 is 1/ISO

So if your ISO is 200 and your aperture is f16 then your shutter speed is 1/200 (or 1/250), from this you can figure out any other aperture/shutter-speed combo 'guess': f11 would be 1/400, f8 would be 1/800 etc.

Given this starting point you can hold the camera up and get a meter reading to see how far off the guess is and adjust accordingly by looking at the meter in the view finder and changing your aperture/shutter-speed until it reads a good exposure. You may also want to try changing metering modes to be tighter (spot) or wider (matrix) which has a pretty good discussion going here:

Rule of thumb for metering? When best to use Multi-Zone/Matrix, Spot, or Center-Weight?

EDIT (given the OP's edit):

The problem most certainly is metering. The camera is metering for the scene which sounds like its 90% The Sun and 10% your subject, you need to meter for your subject. You can accomplish this in a variety of ways:

-You could switch to spot metering and take a meter reading off your subject first and then use that for the photograph

-You could get really close to your subject and meter their chest/face such that they fill up most of the frame for metering and then go back to your original position and use that reading.

-You could look around near you for something in a similar amount of light (the ground in front of or behind your feet) and take a reading and use that

-Get more light on your subject somehow

-etc

Answered by Shizam

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How can I work around metering issues with adapted lenses on a Canon DSLR?

Question

I have a bunch of Contax lenses (C/Y mount) and a mount adapter with "dandelion" chips. This should allow me to use my lenses on any Canon DSLR using aperture mode and stopping down the lens. Thanks to the chips I also have focus confirmation.

However, I have metering problems. Wide open it's ok but when I close the lenses I get overexposure (this is aperture dependent).

I have performed tests on the 50D, 5D MII, and 600D. They all present this problem as if the metering was unable to work in low light (with the lenses stopped down). The problem is present for all the lenses I tested (50mm 1.7, 80mm 1.4, 135mm 2.8). Overexposure may reach 2.5 stops with the 80mm totally closed on a 5D while wide open the metering is ok.

Has anyone else also encountered this problem?

Is there an explanation (I mean, there is no coupling: the body does not know if the lens is wide open or stopped down) for how the metering can be off in one case and not in the other one?

Is there any known workaround (apart from a table giving the correction according to the f-number)?

Asked by floqui

Answer

Canon cameras (as most DSLR cameras these days) meter and AF wide-open. There is a limit on the maximum aperture wherein metering and AF can perform properly, and a cutoff where they are unlikely to work at all. In modern Canon cameras, the metering sensor is up in the viewfinder housing, just above the eyepiece you look through. At narrower apertures (lets say smaller than f/8), the amount of light lost between the primary mirror, the focusing screen and the pentamirror/pentaprism is probably so much that the metering sensor has too little light to work with (well less than 50% of the light that originally entered the lens).

Metering sensors are usually rated in a range of exposure values. I think all of the cameras you listed are rated to work between 1 - 20EV and a certain temperature (roughly room temperature, although the exact value sometimes changes from camera to camera.) The 5D II might actually work from 0-20EV. Top-end professional grade cameras and newer mid-grade professional cameras can operate from -1 or even -2 EV up through 20 or more EV, and therefor have up to three stops more low-light metering capability than your average entry-level.

If you stop down your Contax lenses enough in poor enough scene lighting, you might be reducing the EV at the metering sensor below the minimum of its operating range. Since the metering sensor is designed to operate wide open, before an electronic aperture is stopped down for exposure, if you are working in weak light with a stopped-down manual aperture, you'll make it even harder for the metering sensor to operate correctly. You might simply try half-pressing the shutter with the aperture wide-open, meter, use the AE-Lock function to lock in exposure, stop down, and fully press the shutter button to take the photo at the previously metered settings.

Answered by jrista

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How to meter for manual bounce flash?

Question

I use an eBay flash in manual mode. Mostly indoors, so I bounce the flash off the ceiling. What is a good approach to read the camera metering and make adjustments to flash intensity?

My flash cannot communicate with my camera. No (E)TTL.

Asked by publicRavi

Answer

I have four manual flashes. I love them. I just make a test shot and look at the histogram on the back of my camera: adjust to suit.

Works great.

Check out the Strobist, he loves manual flashes (http://strobist.blogspot.com/)

Answered by Pat Farrell

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What is the reason for underexposure in my film photographs?

Question

Thanks to all the quality answers I got here that helped me to buy a film camera. I got my first roll of film processed and printed.

The print results are not as pleasing as looking at the slides through a loupe (50mm lens). One example is here. It is underexposed and has a purple tint. This is not the only one, all photos have similar characteristic.

Details and settings:

• Camera: Nikon F100
• Film: Velvia 50
• Metering: Matrix

I want to know the reason for underexposed and purple tinted photos. And what should I do to avoid this.

Asked by Vikas

Answer

The purple cast is typically Velvia - learn to love it, embrace it and you'll get some stunning results. The underexposure is a compound of two things - firstly your camera is compensating and trying to make the snow appear as a mid-tone, and secondly Velvia is known for being a bit slow, many people rate it at ISO 40 or even ISO 32.

When shooting Velvia remember that you've only got 4 stops of latitude, in order to record this scene properly I'd meter the snow with a spot-meter, and then pull this up to the highlight by over-exposing that by 2 stops. You'll then get far more detail in the dark areas, and your snow will be sparkly white.

Answered by Arthur Dent

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What metering mode should be used for an HDR shot?

Question

Maybe I'm over thinking this, but I think evaluative is the best being that it would give you the "best" balance of light across the scene. Is it dependent on the scene/mood at the time like a shingle shot? Should I not worry about it because of the multiple exposures? So my main question is, what's the best metering method (evaluative, partial, center) for an HDR shot?

Asked by Jeff

Answer

The metering mode is largely irrelevant when preparing a multi-exposure HDR as no single image will be correctly exposed, so you're only trying to get the centre image in the ballpark so that you don't waste exposures at either end. Unless you're really skilled at judging the dynamic range of a scene (remember the brain compresses dynamic range to fool you), you'll likely have to tweak the number of exposures or the gap between each exposure in to make sure you have the full range captured so you can dial in the correct exposure compensation at this point.

I find whenever I'm shooting a situation where I have the opportunity to review and adjust exposure you want a metering mode that is not sensitive to slight changes in composition, settings like spot metering are bad as if you move the spot slightly after setting exposure compensation the measured exposure could shift, undoing your correction.

Answered by Matt Grum

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Metering an HDR shot

Question

Maybe I'm over thinking this, but I think evaluative is the best being that it would give you the "best" balance of light across the scene. Is it dependent on the scene/mood at the time like a shingle shot? Should I not worry about it because of the multiple exposures? So my main question is, what's the best metering method (evaluative, partial, center) for an HDR shot?

Asked by Jeff

Answer

The metering mode is largely irrelevant when preparing a multi-exposure HDR as no single image will be correctly exposed, so you're only trying to get the centre image in the ballpark so that you don't waste exposures at either end. Unless you're really skilled at judging the dynamic range of a scene (remember the brain compresses dynamic range to fool you), you'll likely have to tweak the number of exposures or the gap between each exposure in to make sure you have the full range captured so you can dial in the correct exposure compensation at this point.

I find whenever I'm shooting a situation where I have the opportunity to review and adjust exposure you want a metering mode that is not sensitive to slight changes in composition, settings like spot metering are bad as if you move the spot slightly after setting exposure compensation the measured exposure could shift, undoing your correction.

Answered by Matt Grum

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What is the EV scale?

Question

I have seen an "EV" (exposure value) scale that's sometimes used to express a camera's exposure settings, or scene brightness. How exactly does this scale work?

Answer

We know that for any scene (really, any light meter measurement) of a particular brightness (and particular sensor sensitivity) there is usually more than one "correct" set of shutter speed and aperture settings. A scene that wants f5.6 and 1/125 will also be correctly exposed at f4.0 and 1/250 and so on.

EV numbers are a way to express the brightness of a scene in a scale that combines the shutter speed and aperture settings into one number -- letting the photographer choose what combination of shutter speed and aperture settings to use. Each EV number equals one stop of brightness, so a scene with an EV of 6 is one stop brighter than a scene with an EV of 5.

The EV values are used generally in the following ways:

• To show the sensitivity of the light meter itself or of the autofocus system. Camera specs will often say that the metering system works from EV 0 to 20, or that the camera can autofocus down to an EV of 1.

• Off camera light meters sometimes have a mode that reports in EV, often with a scale so that the photographer can quickly see what shutter speed/aperture combinations are available.

• Especially with off camera spot meters -- to show the difference in the lightest and darkest part of the scene. The photographer would know if he needed fill light to balance the shadows. This is especially from the film days, where you couldn't judge from an LCD when shooting.

For all the technical details (including the formula), look at Wikipedia's "Exposure value" entry.

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Do I need a $600 light meter or will a $250 one do?

Question

I want to learn more about light and I think finally getting a light meter will help do the trick. I'd like to see the amount of light coming from different light bulbs and the differences in the sun as it sets/rises. I don't feel like my camera's light meter is that helpful with this, I can figure a different in stops but I don't have a clear amount of actual light and how it falls off a subject. I'm using a panasonic Gh1 and a canon 600d as my cameras, and I'd like to use the meter for stills and video. A few years ago when I first looked into light meters it seemed like for all the features (such as 1 degree spot) you needed a $600 + meter, but I recently read this thread where a much cheaper $230 Sekonic version was mentioned and the person who answered the question actually used the cheap meter.

So I'm wondering what you guys think, and would if a $600+ meter would be future proof? Because that could possibly effect my decision if I'm going be looking to upgrade in a year. Thanks guys!

Answer

The 308 is a good incident light/flash meter, and it's about all you need for that (unless you need a built-in PocketWizard transmitter and/or need the meter to do simple lighting ratio calculations for you). It's only a slight pain to exchange the Lumidisc (flat for measuring individual lights) and Lumisphere (a hemisphere for the overall exposure reading). There are parts you can lose -- the 358 and 758 both use a retractable sphere instead of changing parts.

The reflected light reading is about the same as you'd get from your camera set to center-weighted with a normal lens, so its utility as a reflected light meter really depends on whether your camera has a meter at all. With a DSLR, you'd be better off going TTL, but if you ever decide to use a medium format film camera or a press/view camera, it may come in handy.

The only real shortcoming is spot metering. If you can find the spot metering attachment (I don't know if it's currently offered, but the one for the discontinued 328 should fit since they use the same sphere/disc), it's a five degree spot (not one) and there is viewfinder parallax to deal with -- I found it was very difficult to get a reading off of a specific part of a scene with the 328 and wound up using a Pentax Spotmeter 5 instead.

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Why can't digital camera sensors expose each photosite individually?

Question

Why is it impossible for camera sensors to function the way the human eye can? What I mean is, why does a certain portion of the image have to be over/underexposed if we compensate for dark and light areas respectively when taking a photo and deciding on the aperture and shutter speed settings.

I understand that the light getting in depends on aperture and shutter speed but since DSLRs are digital, can't there be a technology that would enable each sensor cell use of its own metering and therefore they wouldn't all be subjected to the same amount of light but depending on the metering, a CPU of the camera would shut off certain cells as not to overexpose them.

I hope I'm not saying nonsense. It sure seems to me like a plausible idea.

Answer

Who decides which pixels get how much gain? Much of what goes on in the human visual system happens in the cortex, not the eye, and depends on what we think is important to see based on a combination of intellectual decision and the (somewhat override-able) instinctual drive for self-preservation. While it's true in one sense that we see what's there, it is equally true in another sense that we see what we want to (or need to) see.

It would be almost trivial to create a relatively low pixel density sensor with large photosites that allow for an enormous dynamic range and (assuming a CCD-type technology, since the current CMOS sensor tech can't work this way) a per-pixel electronic shutter in addition to the mechanical shutter. So what would that get you? A flat image with a lot of bit depth and very low local contrast (if the entire bit depth is converted as-is for display or print) along with a number of pixels that are almost, but not quite, clipped by the sensor saturation (although they are, in fact, clipped by the limiting action of the electronic shutter just before the point of saturation). Let's say for the sake of argument, though, that this sensor and its associated computer could record the clipping data (the reason why it stopped recording at that sensel, which could be as simple as recording the actual exposure duration at that site). That would allow the camera's electronics to reconstruct what the numbers would have been if the photosite could have stayed in the game until the final whistle. So now we have an even flatter image with greater bit depth. And where do you draw the line? 32 bits? 64?

Now comes the hard part -- turning this flat, high-dynamic-range image data into a compelling photograph. The simplest approach is to take the eight bits (or whatever the output bit depth would be) that represent the primary metered image and throw away the rest. It would probably be not much more difficult to fit the data to an S-curve, compressing the extreme shadows and/or highlights -- which is more or less what the extended dynamic range settings on newer cameras already do. But there are only so many output bits available per pixel, and most of the extended highlight values are going to round up to white (or at least a 254 and 255 mix). So you've gained very little by dramatically complicating the system.

But there is still one option open -- selective area mapping. Why not bring the sky, say, or just the clouds in that sky, down in value so it can retain detail, while preserving the desired contrast in the foreground? This is where the hard problem lives. What's important? Should the camera decide for you? If the camera decides, then we have a big advance in machine vision and artificial intelligence to get around to first. If not, then do you really want to make this level of post-capture decision for every picture you shoot? Yes, I know there will be some photo-techno-weinies who really do want to be that hands-on, but can we accept that it's a pathological condition, and that professionals interested in turn-around time and the vast majority of consumers aren't like that?

So you need a new sensor, vastly more complicated electronics around the sensor, an enormous image file for projected raw data (which necessitates larger cards and longer write times/slower frame rates), all to gather data that is going to be thrown away most of the time so that you can occasionally shoot one-shot HDR images that require a lot of human intervention in post (or a huge leap in MV/AI). You could probably sell a few of these, but I'd expect the market to look an awful lot more like the medium format market than the existing 35mm/APS-C market. That is, you'd sell to a select group of well-heeled photographers who either actually need the capabilities for professional reasons or to fulfill their fine art vision, and a few who just get a big enough kick out of post-processing to pay the technology tax.

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How important is lack of color matrix metering and 100% viewfinder in Nikon F100 compared to Nikon F5?

Question

I'm planning to buy a film camera. I'm undecided between Nikon F100 and Nikon F5. The major differences that I could figure out from Thom Hogan's review are:

Pro F100:

• F100 is lighter than the monster F5

Pro F5:

• F5 has color matrix metering, compared to F100's matrix metering, which according to him is immaculate.
• F5 has a 100% viewfinder compared to F100's 96%.

Being a DSLR shooter, I'm not able to figure out how important a good color matrix meter would be. On my DSLR I'm mostly on spot meter, but then I've the luxury of reviewing the image on live view and making any necessary adjustments. Also, my DSLR has a 92% viewfinder, but again I've the luxury to crop digital images.

How important are these factors in a film camera?

Answer

A 100% viewfinder is really a pro feature on film cameras -- it can actually cause problems if you are shooting for mounted slides or having your film processed at a consumer lab, since part of the image is going to be lost under the slide mount or to slight cropping in automated printers. If you compose to the edges of a 100% finder, you are going to lose something somewhere; the "consumer" viewfinder will at least make sure that you're getting it all in. Cropping still happens; it's just not under your control. If you're shooting for film scans (common for everybody these days, but once upon a time something that only pros shooting for print would do), or printing to the frame edge (which is going to have a bit of a grungy roughness) then the 100% finder makes a lot more sense and can be worth the extra cost.

Colour matrix metering means that the camera can recognize things like skin tones and make allowances for them. If the metering is grey-scale only, then the meter is only looking for grey-scale values; the matrix computer won't be able to say "ooh, this looks like a tight head shot, and that big pinkish blob in the middle is probably meant to be a stop or so above middle grey". If you're letting the camera do most of the work, then the ability of the camera to distinguish colours make a lot of difference. If you're spot metering and placing tones (doing the roll-film version of the Zone System), then it won't make any difference -- the success of the metering job depends on your ability to expose for the tones. (If you're shooting anything that's colour-critical, incident light metering, either with a light meter or with a grey card and your camera's meter, is often the better choice anyway. You can take advantage of the film's latitude and printing/processing to bring the highlights and shadows back into line, but getting the critical stuff bang-on works best in camera, and you don't want to be guessing at subject reflectance.)

So it all comes down to what you're shooting and what happens after the shot. If you're shooting in a journalistic style and need the camera to be a full partner in the exposure so that you can get that never-to-be-repeated shot, then colour matrix metering can help (a slight caveat, though: it doesn't work nearly as well in a world of darker-skinned people as it does with East Asian and European complexions and scene recognition is never perfect -- you need to know enough to perform a quick sanity check on what the camera is telling you). And if you're processing the finished image yourself or scanning it for print, then the ability to compose to the edge in a 100% viewfinder will make a small difference in the sharpness and grain of the final image -- but if you're not, then you may lose elements of the image that were important to the composition.

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What exposure mode and techniques should I use when out-and-about?

Question

I'm interested to hear what exposure/metering techniques people use when taking out-and-about shots (no tripod). I almost always have my camera set to Aperture Priority mode, and I suspect most people do the same. I have been using back button focussing for a while now, so I am able to lock the focus point and exposure point individually before composing and taking a shot. I use a single, centred focus point and find that fairly straight forward to use. However, I really struggle with the exposure point. On my Canon 30D there are 4 metering modes:

• Evaluative (called Matrix mode on Nikons)
• Center-Only (Partial Metering)
• Spot (Center-Biased)
• Center Weighted Averaging (Full-Frame Averaging)

Of the 4, Evaluative is the most 'automatic'; the camera makes judged decision on exposure based on the whole scene. I wanted to try to avoid this mode because I thought I would learn more going for one of the more manual options. So I started using Spot mode for a bit, but most of my photos ended up either under or over-exposed. So I reverted back to Evaluative mode.

So, after that lengthy introduction, my question is: do you have a good technique for getting the best out of your cameras metering modes? and Which metering mode(s) do you usually use?

Answer

It doesn't make a huge amount of difference what mode you use because if you want accurate exposures, 9 times out of 10 you have to correct it manually.

I use AV (aperture value) and evaluative meeting, it gets the closest in the widest range of circumstances. Then I shoot and chimp (check the exposure on the rear LCD screen), I often have to adjust the exposure and short again. However sophisticated the meeting algorithm it's based around the assumption that everything you shoot is middle grey. The camera doesn't know what you're photographing so it can't really decide what's over or under exposed.

In this sense all metering modes are "manual", I prefer evaluative over spot as it's less likely to change due to slight composition changes so I can dial in the required exposure compensation.

However if I'm feeling lazy then it's a case of pointing the camera up to get more sky if the image on the LCD is underexposed or pointing it at the ground when it's overexposed (provided you separate metering and focus as you suggest).

The point is you have to decide the exposure not the camera. Metering is however useful for getting you close, or for when you don't have time for a second shot! If you have time, always have a few goes at setting the exposure, as digital film costs (approximately) nothing.

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What situations are best suited for spot metering?

Question

I have found myself using spot metering on several occasions in order to get the right exposure, such as sunsets and on bright days with a subject in the shade. What other situations are well suited for spot metering instead of the standard matrix mode?

Answer

Shooting the moon is a pretty good time to use it. :-)

Basically anytime the subject you actually want a clear photo of is drastically different in brightness compared to the rest of the scene.

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What is a light meter, how do I use one, and for what sort of digital photography do I need one?

Question

What is a light meter?

How do I use one?

What sort of photography will fool a digital camera's meter? Hence for those you do need to meter.

Answer

A light meter is a device that measures light.

There are two types of light meters:

• Incident light meter: Measures light falling on the meter itself. Those are characterized by a dome-like shape which is used to average incoming light.
• Reflected light meter: Measures light being reflected from an object towards the light meter.

All digital cameras have a reflected light meter built-in. Actually, they have several, up 1200 of them! If you put your camera to Spot metering mode, then it measures light from one area (between 2%-10% of the frame, configurable on some higher-end Nikon DSLRs) which is what hand-held reflected light meters do too.

This is how a digital camera measures exposure. Hence, there is little use for a stand-alone reflected light meter for digital photography. However, the read-value is highly dependent on the subject, since dark/less-reflective subjects reflect less light than light/more-reflective ones.

An incident must be placed very close to your subject, so that it receives the same light. Once you do that, the reading is good for that ambient light, no matter what color or how reflective is your subject. These meters are typically used in studio environments where light is setup for portraits or product photography. You only need to meter when the lighting changes.

Since these devices are separate from your camera, you have extra work to do to use them. First, you usually need to input the ISO and sometimes aperture or shutter-speed into the meter. When the reading is taken, the meter gives you the missing parameter, usually shutter-speed or aperture. You put these values into your camera in Manual exposure mode.

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How do I use the +/- scale of the light meter in my camera?

Question

I have just recently used the metering scale. I assume that if the scale arrow points in the middle, this means that the camera detects that the current exposure settings are the "right" ones.

However, I assume there would be times when you want to go above or below the middle point in the scale. The problem is, I do not know what those situations are. So, what are those situations?

As a side question, what does the -1 and +1 or -2 and +2 mean here?

Answer

The metering scale you are referring to is used for two things.

In manual mode (M), it indicates how far you are from what the camera thinks should be the right value. It is the camera's guess (depending on the metering mode, see other questions in metering).

In all other modes, it is called exposure-compensation (EC) and is you telling the camera to adjust its measurement to something brighter or darker.

In general the camera meters so that the scene is on average of average brightness. By doing over the metered value, you are telling the camera you want something brighter and by going under the value you are telling you want something darker.

The metering scale is measured in EV (Exposure Value) where each full-step represent a doubling of brightness. So +1 is twice as bright, +2 is 4 times as bright and -1 is half as bright, etc.

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How do I use spot metering?

Question

What's the right way to use spot metering? Is it better to use in manual mode than one of the priority modes?

There are questions about when to use spot metering, but none that serve as a tutorial to describe how to use it.

Please address the issue of exposure compensation. I am under the impression that spot metering is hard to use in aperture priority because you can't (to my knowledge) over/under expose an image in these modes since the camera will adjust other variables to get the proper exposure. (So I need to meter off something that is gray-ish since I can't meter off something black and compensate?)

This question is motivated by another one that I asked here. It became clear that I didn't really know how to use spot metering, and @rfusca suggested I ask a separate question about this.

Answer

I wrote a tutorial about this very subject on my website. You can read it here.

To summarise, there are two advantages to using it in manual mode:

1. Once you've set your meter for the prevailing lighting conditions, you shouldn't need to worry about the exposure again (unless you need to change the aperture or shutter speed, or the lighting changes significantly)
2. Using manual mode allows you to move beyond the 2 stop range you get on most cameras with exposure compensation.

Learn the zones (see link); then find something in your image that you want to assign to a particular zone. Spot metering is the best way to isolate a small part of your image without any extraneous elements getting in the way of the metering. I now shoot almost exclusively with manual spot metering.

Of course there may be valid reasons why it's not appropriate to use manual mode - you may be shooting in rapidly varying lighting conditions, for example. But learning how to use spot metering in conjunction with manual mode will add another tool to your belt.

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Does spot/partial metering always assume 18%?

Question

I'm beginning to work on understanding and hopefully effectively using different metering modes in my photography. I have done some reading and understand the benefit of using spot and partial metering in portrait photography. I am using a Canon 500D for reference, but I imagine it would be the same for most DSLR cameras.

My question is this: When I set the camera to spot metering, find the location in the frame which is the "most important" and let the camera meter that spot, will the camera always set the exposure with the assumption that the location I metered has 18% luminance?

To this effect, if I'm shooting a portrait and focus on the forehead for example, I can assume the camera set the exposure as if it were neutral gray, and then increase the compensation for lighter skinned people, and decrease compensation for darker skinned people?

Answer

Yes, that's how it works.

This can be helpful when you want to ensure that some subjects are to be exposed correctly. For example, meter off a white shirt and open up 1.5-2 stops to ensure it's not blown out. Another classic example is a black leather jacket. Metering off it and then stopping down 1,5-2 stops will ensure it looks black without losing detail.

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Why use a dedicated light meter instead of the one built into the camera?

Question

I know a few people who carry around a dedicated light meter unit (such as this one by Sekonic) and use that to meter photos instead of using the meter built into their cameras (and these are relatively new mid-range DSLRs).

Is there any good reason why someone would do this?

Answer

Not only are light meters more versatile, you can do a few kinds of metering with them that you can't with cameras (and vice versa).

The meter you've linked (and I happen to own) has two kinds of metering: reflective and incident. Also, light meters can meter for flashes/strobes, something you can't do with modern DSLRs.

Reflective metering in the metering you know from DSLRs; light is reflected off your subject and back into the camera. While this kind of metering has many advantages: you can meter from far away, you take into account the whole scene, etc., it has many pitfalls. A scene with lots of snow or a dark wall can fool it. I'm sure you have a some images that are poorly exposed for no reason, among a series of well exposed images - that's what happens when a reflective meter is fooled.

Incident metering is a bit different; it allows you to measure the light falling onto a subject at the point of that subject. That gives you a "truer" exposure, one where dark material will come out dark and light material will come out white. Sekonic has a pretty good FAQ entry on the subject. When shooting people, you would measure at the subject's face with the dome pointing at your lens, something you often see in movies.

With a modern flash meter, you can also meter flashes and strobes. The meter you linked can either be hooked up to a PC sync cable, or can be set to react to a flash of light. This lets you measure the results of strobes you've set up without using a digital camera or a polaroid. It also lets you check that you have nailed your exposure, without checking your LCD a thousand times.

In addition to measuring the whole scene, with incident metering, you can measure the light from each of your strobes, and if you ever look at strobe notations, that's how they're usually recorded. This you measure at the subject, pointing the white dome at your various lights while firing them off separately. This lets you quickly jot down your flash ratios, and that's extremely useful when recreating a look.

Oh, and the reason I often carry that Sekonic meter around: It's much, much smaller than my DSLR and I use it for my film cameras that don't meter.

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How to get meter reading for a DSLR if not from a gray card?

Question

I read an article called Expose (to the) Right, which explained why you should try to get the graph of the histogram as much to the right of the scale as possible. The reasoning is that DSLRs record much more detail in bright areas of the subject than in darker areas.

You could then stop back in your photo editing tool to a "normal" correct exposed picture but with reduced noise and more range than with doing the shot with the "normal" correct exposure upfront.

That makes all sense to me, but in the end the author quotes someone else stating:

For film based photography, the highlight end of the scale is compressed by the shoulder portion of the D/log E curve. So as brighter and brighter objects are photographed, the highlight detail gets gradually compressed more and more until eventually the film saturates. But up until that point, the highlight compression progresses in a gradual fashion.

Solid state sensors in digital cameras behave very differently. As light falls on a sensor, a charge either accumulates or dissipates (depending on the sensor technology). Its response is well behaved right up until the point of saturation, at which time it abruptly stops. There is no forgiveness by gradually backing off, as was the case with film.

Because of this difference, setting up the exposure using an 18% gray card (as is typically done with film) does not work so well with a digital camera. You will get better results if you set your exposure such that the whitest white in the scene comes close to, but not quite reaching, the full digital scale (255 for 8-bit capture, 65535 for 16-bit capture). Base the exposure on the highlight for a digital camera, and a mid-tone (e.g. 18% gray card) for a film camera.

Source: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml

So … how do I do meter reading for a DSLR if not from a gray card? My DSLR metering will always try to make my image gray, right? How can I avoid this, to make images which are exposed "to the right"?

Answer

I think the article is referring to using the histogram to judge exposure, after a test shot has been taken. Using the histogram as a guide you can increase exposure until the top of the histogram hits the right edge, indicating clipping may start happening.

If you have to rely on the in camera metering (which will meter assuming 18% reflectance as you suggest) then you can simply use exposure compensation to correct the camera exposure up a stop or two in order to expose to the right. Using the histogram is much more accurate however!

Whilst we're on the subject the luminous landscape article is a little simplistic and wrong in a few areas. Expose to the right doesn't increase detail it increases signal to noise ratio. The more light you let in, the more signal you get and hence better SNR. This even applies to increasing ISO in order to expose to the right, you increase the analogue signal above the noise floor by amplifying it.

Exposing to the right is not always desirable. Increasing SNR can come at the expense of limiting colour fidelity. The higher you go up the brightness scale the fewer colours can be represented.

Finally on every DSLR I've seen, the histogram you get is based on a jpeg image the camera creates - even if you shoot raw. I know of no camera that gives you a histogram of the raw values. This means you have to be careful of your jpeg settings (saturation and contrast) in particular when setting exposures based on the histogram.

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