Metering is a wonderful thing.

I have two lazy habits that sometimes sabotage my best intentions when making photographs. I've gotten used to using cameras in automatic settings when shooting quickly, outside. I let the cameras set the white balance and the basic exposure. It make sense in a lot of situations but when you get into the studio and you are inventing the light it pays to do two things on every shoot. The first is to use a light meter. In my opinion an incident light meter is the only metering tool that works every time. The second thing I always do, if I am being mindful of quality in the studio, is to make a custom white balance. Here's the tricky thing: White balance affects exposure. Exposure affects white balance. I always meter first and then I do my custom white balance.

When I do a custom white balance I use the exposure I've gotten from metering instead of relying on the camera to compensate.

You may be able to make adjustments in raw to your exposures and your overall color balance but they will be compromises and you'll see it in non-linear color casts in shadow areas and you'll regret not metering when you find that the histogram in your camera convinces you to underexpose in nearly every situation. That under exposure robs you of detail in your shadows (if you want it) and adds color noise to the overall file as you "lift" exposure to get where you should have been all along.

We (collectively; not royally) tend to use RAW as a 24/7 crutch and a convenient excuse not to practice our craft with the diligence and mindfulness that we could. We've come to believe in an industry wide mantra which states that RAW is always better than a Jpeg file. I've done some technical digging and I'm here to tell you that a Jpeg file that is accurately metered and color balanced at the time of capture spanks the heck out of an underexposed RAW files that's brought back under control in post. And part of the problem is color shifts due to exposure differences.

I don't care what the web says on this. Every studio photographer and videographer needs to own and know how to use an incident light meter to work at a high quality level. And every photographer and videographer looking for consistency and quality should know how all their cameras make custom white balances. Over time it will save one much time and energy. Once you practice mindfully using your meter you'll walk off your shooting sets knowing that you've nailed the technical stuff. Getting the emotion right is a different beast. Don't let the technical get in the way of the wonderful....

And, yes, I get the irony of using a black and white image as the illustration for the top of the article. For all the literal folks, here's a color version:

Obscure and marvelous objects of keen desire. Meter me. Please.

A light meter for the 21st century.

While the photo world pants at the rumor of more and more very similar cameras being readied for the market a lot of really cool stuff is languishing because it's not bling enough for prime time. The Sekonic Pro L-478D light meter is one of these cool stuff devices.  

While light meters seem to have fallen out of favor with most grab and shoot photographers I still carry around two different ones and use them on every shoot that requires me to use lighting.  I wouldn't want to do lighting set ups without one. The one that travels with me everywhere is the tough and hardy Minolta autometer V f.  Like most good meters from last century it reads both flash and ambient light. It's never broken and it takes a double a battery, which makes me happy.

In the studio I depend on my Sekonic L-508 zoom meter. It's a great incident light meter and it also has a built-in in spot meter function that I use, infrequently.  I use both the Minolta and Sekonic meters to measure mostly flash output on white backgrounds but after a bad experience with the rendering of test portraits on the rear LCD of a Nikon D700 I've gone back to making incident readings for every portrait session I do. I've found LCDs on most camera give varying results in varying ambient light environments and it's easy to under expose portraits since the live view or review screens always seem too hot to me.

With two meters in residence at VSL why in the world would I want the L- 478D? Well, mostly because it's so cool. It has features that I think are fun and useful.  I love the big screen and the fact that it's a touch screen. I like the front and center cinematography features and while I probably won't have a use for shutter angle settings as the world of film movie cameras darkens I find being able to set frames per second on the meter a big help when I'm trying to noodle in a good exposure that still hews to proper video technique.

The meter builds on the camera calibration we first say in the L-758 meter and the compulsively detail oriented photographer will have the option of fine tuning the meter and its read out based on actual camera performance.

But why use a separate meter at all? Precisely because we are so subjective when it comes to visual analysis. Most camera LCDs and EVFs show a preview or a review based on the jpeg converted file generated by our cameras, even when we are shooting raw. The exposure latitude of jpegs is much narrower and I've found that camera makers consistently engineer their cameras to err on the side of underexposure in nearly all situations. Even when the image on the screen is big and bright. You can see it plainly if you examine your camera's histogram and compare it with what you are seeing when you look at the same image on the camera's screen. The screen shot looks bold and bright while the (too tiny) histograms almost always have a notch-lette of flat line over to the right hand side.

When I use an incident flash meter, at the subject location, aiming directly back to the camera I generally get readings that are one half to one full stop more aggressive than what my cameras suggest. When I trust the meter I generally get perfectly exposed skin tones and detain in all highlights but I don't get crunched shadows and ruddy transitions from mid tone to dark in portraits.  That alone is enough to keep me using meters for a long time to come.

Where incident light meters really come into their own is aiding in the quick and precise set up of white background studio shots. I meter the background to make sure it's even and I take the incident reading (plus 1/3 stop) as my base for the set up. Then I use the incident light meter with the subject and raise or lower the illumination on the subject until it reads what the background does (before adding the 1/3 stop correction for detail-less white...) and I know I'm where I need to be to have the cleanest, noise free files with the right tonal ranges. Magic.

You're probably able to do much the same process with the reflected light meter in the camera but there's more math involved and the reflectivity of the background materials makes a difference in the accuracy of the metering. 

The reason I want the new is mostly that the new display is much more readable for me than the older, lower contrast, monochrome displays of the older meters. I also like that I can make changes to frequently used parameters on the touch screen rather than having to find the right button and scroll.

The meter uses two triple "A" batteries, which is better than some obscure older camera type battery (I'd prefer one double "A"....).   With included accessories you can use the meter as a reflected one instead of an incident light meter, and, by adding an accessory you can convert the meter into a five degree reflected spot meter.  The meter is highly configurable and offers thirteen different custom settings. It is firmware upgradeable via an USB socket.

Both of my current meters are over ten years old. Buying a new meter happens rarely but they are pieces of gear that I use nearly every day. When I'm shooting with a non-metered Hasselblad they are a constant companion. Now, if I can just get approval from the CFO.....