Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/04/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Eric Welch wrote: > > At 10:32 PM 4/5/98 +0000, you wrote: > > > If you take the time to learn how to us an incident meter and how to > >meter for various lighting circumstances you will learn how to get not > >only well exposed images, but grow an understanding of light, how it > >works on film and how to control it and use it to your full advantage > >to create images that express what you are wanting to express. > > The exact same thing could be said about selective metering in a Leica. I > have shot professionally for over 10 yeras, many of them with chrome, and > with chrome primarily before that, to my very first camera and the very > first month I started making pictures. I never use incident meters in the > field, because they tell me nothing about the reflectivity of the subject. It is indeed the reflectivity of the subject that is the problem--until the world gets painted a uniform 18% gray. With an incident meter you have an automatic standard--no guess work about compensations--gee, is the snow two stops or just 1 1/2? So on. >In the field, I already have too > much junk hanging on me, a meter is just one more thing to drop, break, get > in the way. That's how I work, and it works just fine. For those who work > differently, more power to you. But don't say your way is superior. For you > it is, but not for everyone. I must vote with Harrison. About the only time I get exposures wrong is when I use the built in meters. The only people I know shooting (excuse me, photographing) boats who might use an incamera meter would be news people using negatives. I have watched meter swings through 2 stops differences depending on how much white sail or white hull in in the frame. It would be absolute professional suicide to use program. You can't compensate fast enough. In these scenes I will check the incident meter by using the incamera to meter blue sky--in essence turning the in camera meter into an incident meter since deep blue sky equals 18%. If light is changing dramatically and quickly, and if I am on a commercial job, I just have assistant handle the meter and call the changes as we work. You get into a rhythm and I have done entire rolls from bright sun to deep cloud and back in the space of a minute and a half with every frame right using this method. In the F5 literature somewhere is a sequence supposedly demonstrating the ability of the meter. And to my eye it demonstrates the inability of the meter to be consistently accurate--right there in print! Several frames are too dark. You can just see the meter in operation, see the highlights affecting the exposure. I wish it weren't so. But wishing won't make it so. In the finaly analysis, each of has to use what works for the kind of pix we make and the way we handle light to make our images. donal - -- Donal Philby San Diego http://www.donalphilby.com