I've Seen the Light (Meter)

Man, what an awful title for my first blog post. But, there you go, we're all stuck with it. I purchased a Sekonic 478D light meter a few months back and while this isn't a review of the meter itself (it's great), I wanted to write a short post on how having a meter changed my photography and why you'd now have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. A meter always seemed like a waste of time with digital cameras. After all, the camera has a meter and a screen and the histogram, so why bother? Even when I was doing art reproduction with a view camera and scanning back, I had software to even out the lighting (so I could just eyeball it) and exposure was done using custom software (using the green channel mostly), so again, why bother? A meter seemed like such a throwback to the film days.

After meeting photographer Robert Luk and having him constantly harp on the utility of using a meter I finally watched some videos on the Sekonic web site, and it all made sense. I highly recommend heading to the "Classroom" link on their web site (I have no affiliation with them). Once you realize the value of metering incident vs reflected light and start playing with your camera's build in meter, you'll realize that the exposure your camera chooses in extremely inconsistent and unreliable. I never realized how "off" it was at times. The camera doesn't know your subject and all it cares about is averaging everything out to middle grey. It does have sophisticated algorithms and different modes, but skin tones and things like clouds and snow can cause extreme over or under exposure. Just panning 2 inches within a scene can cause an unwarranted 1/3 or 1/2 stop difference. It's good enough most of the time, but it's probably worse than you think. And yes, it can be adjusted in post, but that's more work, more noise and in some cases blown highlights and missed shots. Using a meter gives you consistent results every time. You can even calibrate it to your individual camera. If you're in the studio you'll only need one or two test shots to verify the look you want, not 10 shots to get the histogram right (they call that "chimping," but I hate that term for some reason). Just plug in the numbers from your meter with the camera on manual and every exposure will be the same and perfect, until you change the distance between the subject and light source. You're free to move back and forth as you wish- just shoot away. The same goes for outdoor or event shooting. Now, if you don't have an assistant and the light is changing a lot due to clouds or whatever, it might be worth it to just deal with the cameras meter, but for me that's now a last resort. I shoot Canon and always hated the way ETTL flash exposures were all over the place, even with two identical shots. I didn't like using manual because taking 15 test shots in front of a client isn't professional. Now, as with the camera's meter, ETTL is a last resort.

The Sekonic videos explain the problems with reflective meters and all the advantage of incident metering. Yes, they're trying to sell you something, but they're 100% informative and don't seem like commercials. I never thought I'd use a meter, but a 10 year old can figure it out in 5 minutes and the technical quality of my images has improved noticeably. It also saves me a lot of time during a shoot and in post. Go get one on Amazon and learn to use it. If you don't agree, sent it back.