BebuLamar

Most cameras today have spot meter although the spot is rather large but should be sufficient. None has incident mode but if you need you can put a dome on the lens and use it as incident meter. No camera has flash meter but one can guess take a shot and adjust.
However, it is good to have a meter but it's not a must have.

BHC Loc: Strawberry Valley, JF, USA

Not by me, you won't! I find my spot meter very useful when the subject, whether it be a landscape, family gathering, still life or anything else, presents a great deal of contrast. The meter lets me take multiple readings and assign priorities in my choice of settings.

RWR Loc: La Mesa, CA

The FX format Nikon Df measures a 4mm diameter circle - 1.5% of the frame. The 4mm spot in the DX format Fuji S3-Pro is about 2% of the frame. Neither is large by anyone's measure. I have no doubt most other digital cameras are similar.
I do agree that a hand-held meter is not a must have, especially for landscapes.

TheDman Loc: USA

I'd rather be out making photos than fooling around with a light meter.

woolpac Loc: Sydney Australia

Most light meters work either 2 modes Incident or reflected and unless you are specific in your purchase of a hand held light meter most do not measure flash.

Incident is the more accurate because you are measuring light that falls onto a subject referenced to an 18% grey scale. That applies to where you are taking the measurement. Reflected metering is again referenced to an 18% grey scale so light reflected from black will be interpreted as grey as white will referenced 18% grey hence the reason for some badly exposed images that no doubt some times encounter.

I use a 2 degree hand spot meter if I want to get technical an old legacy from back and white zone technique days but I think you will be better served using and understanding the metering modes in camera. Generally average or center weighted average will cover most lighting landscape lighting conditions. Just keep shooting try your different modes for different conditions we never stop learning.

paulrph1 Loc: Washington, Utah

Yip, but that all depends upon the scene also. It will vary and some it can help greatly with and other maybe no help at all. What it really does is cut down on the amount of PP that is needed and the number of bad shots. Used all of the time in film because film was so expensive. Now with digital we shot away but for some reason we seldom discard the crap. Landscapes of high contrast could use a light meter.

CO

Incident light meters aren't very useful for outdoor photography because you need to get the meter next to your subject. I have a Sekonic L-478DR that I use for studio shots. There's an optional 5-degree attachment available for it for taking reflected light readings. I haven't purchased it because my camera's built-in meter does a great job for that.

paulrph1 Loc: Washington, Utah

I disagree. A camera makes generalizations and does not necessarily see what the photographer is seeing. What he has in his mind for a good shot. The camera does not think, it just does.

DaveHam Loc: Reading UK

Interesting question.

When metering using the camera it is possible to get two readings regardless of settings, one using live view and one through the viewfinder. I've experienced this with Nikon and Canon; on checking with both manufacturers I'm told that the reason is the algorithms used to calculate the metering are different when using live view versus the viewfinder. Which does not bode well for the accuracy of in camera metering.... two separate answers for the same thing at the same time?

A comparison of meter readings against a hand held meter - and specifically in landscape photography - shows that the dslr viewfinder readings tend to under expose somewhat, the value depending on the circumstances and lighting, whereas the live view reading tends always to be a little nearer the meter reading. Checking this with the manufacturers they both apparently err on the side of caution with their metering; often an image showing with blow out on the dslr comes up in Photoshop well within the exposure range.

So personally I would prefer to meter with a hand held when working landscape as experience has taught me that the meter is generally more accurate. Where a meter is not available it is possible to generalise about the level of under exposure on each camera I use, so one of my D800's is consistently about one stop under, whereas in the same situation a D4 is about 1/3rd.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

We sorta have to clarify some things here. Meters come in two types, incident and reflected. With incident, you point the meter toward the light source and measure its intensity directly. With reflected, you obviously point towards what you are shooting and measure the light reflected from it.

The advantage to an incident meter is that the reading is based on the illumination, not on what is being reflected back by the subject. With a reflected reading, the meter is always trying to hit 18% gray. So if you have a lot of very dark tones it will tend to overexpose since it is not seeing much light, and if there are a lot of light tones it will generally underexpose. An incident reading is pre-reflectance, so darks will remain dark and lights will remain light.

A camera meter is basically a "smart" reflectance meter. It generally analyzes a scene not by total reflectance, but reads exposure in a matrix pattern across the frame, and then chooses an exposure based on a number of inbuilt algorithms after matching the pattern to that closest in its memory. But of course it isn't foolproof, and sometimes you are not as close as you would wish. This is especially true if there is a lot of dark subject and then something very bright (like a sliver of sky in a landscape). The meter knows to disregard very bright light sources to avoid severe underexposure, but sometimes valuable highlights do get blown away.

Incident metering is, I believe, most valuable in the studio to set the relative brightnesses of multiple light sources. If you have one light source, it's enough to carry a small 18% gray card and take you exposure with the camera meter from that. That will give you a "neutral" reading the same as you would get from an incident meter (if you only have one major light source, anyway).

In the old days, a 1 degree spot meter was a great tool for landscapes. You would check the scene: find the lightest and darkest tone, and you would know how many EV apart they were. You could meter specifically on a spot you wanted as the middle tone, and make an appropriate exposure to try to capture all the tones. This was especially useful when shooting cut film, because Ansel Adams' zone system allowed you to put various tones in various zones through deliberately altering your exposure and development times. If you had a very contrasty scene, you would overexpose and underdevelop your negative, so ask keep the highlights from blocking up (dark on the negative). For a low contrast scene, underexposure and overdevelopment would add density to the highlights.

Adams had this all worked out into an exact science, and it worked beautifully for single exposures, but obviously you can't custom develop negatives on a roll.

Personally, I think a light meter is a waste of time and money with digital landscapes. The trees aren't running away: in the time it takes to make a reading you can shoot a series of test shots and look at the histograms. You can also just do a quick bracket series to cover all the bases.

With digital landscapes, I think the main thing is to know your camera's dynamic range: How much can you overexpose to save shadow detail and still be able to recover highlights? Or better, if you have a clean sensor, you can learn how much you can underexpose to insure that you don't blow the highlights and still recover shadow detail, because you can generally recover a lot more from dark shadows than from blown highlights. Also, a dark shadow is generally not anywhere near as objectionable in a final image that a blown out highlight.

Once you learn the acceptable limits of your camera, you can make intelligent decisions about just how much you should alter the exposure that either the camera meter or a handheld meter is giving you in order to be able to tweak the most of of the final file you get.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

If you understand what the meter is measuring, you cannot ever make a mistake - regardless of what you use - in camera, incident or reflected.

When shooting black and white negative film underexposure was to be avoided at all costs, since the area of lost shadow detail was clear on the negative, much like blown highlights today (or in color transparency). So if shadows were important, a landscape photographer (or architectural or whatever) would use a spotmeter to find the area of the image reflecting the least amount of light. If they needed to have detail in that area they would select a camera setting that was 3 stops below the meters recommendation. If it was ok to let that area go completely black then the meter's reading could be reduced by 4 stops.

In wide contrast scenes, it was important to read both the highlights and shadows, to understand, as Kymarto stated, the contrast range and how that might affect the negative development. Shooting roll film you still had some ability to adjust development but not nearly to the degree you could with sheet film.

An incident meter would not be as useful in wide contrast settings if you are of the type of photographer that uses the incident reading without compensating. With negatives it is possible to irrevocably underexpose the darkest shadows with an incident reading, yet almost impossible to do that with a reflected meter. In similar fashion with digital it is possible to blow highlights. That is why incident meters are best used in studio or on a movie set, where ALL of the lighting is under complete control.

hughburden Loc: UK

This is true.

Whether one uses a handheld or in camera light meter the user has to decide how to interpret the results and indeed how to get them from the device in the first place. It is pretty much the same procedure.
Rpavich and I have crossed swords and agreed to disagree on this ages ago I seem to remember.

Whatever device suits ones personal style of working is what to go for-baring in mind a hand held meter is not the holy grail for perfect exposure and you are buying a product that already exists in your camera.

I own 2 light meters, two flash meters and one colour meter. I shoot studio and location stuff....... I havn't used any of my hand held meters for 8 years give or take a year. Even to measure flash in the studio.

Each to his own prefered way.....but my view is save lightmeter money and invest on other equipment or indeed travel to get to the landscapes ))

Preachdude Loc: Geneva, OH

Absolutely! The camera's built-in metering system does not always adjust exposure for the area of your eye's focus. This also why HDR bracketing is so useful. The hand-held meter will often help you make the subtle difference between a good image and a great image.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

The camera is not supposed to adjust anything. It's entirely up to you. Have you ever used a hand held meter to shoot stage performances, fireworks, street scenes at night, strongly backlit subjects, sunsets, etc etc etc - you need to use the horse-sense acquired over the years to get that "great" shot and if you rely too much on the meter, that great shot may be beyond reach. Here is an example where an in-camera meter has a clear advantage over any other metering approach:

(Download)

winterrose Loc: Kyneton, Victoria, Australia

The photographer sees what he or she has in his or her mind for a good shot, the photographer thinks how to achieve the result, then a good photographer knows how to set the camera. Whether he or she achieves that as a result of readings from a hand held meter or by interpreting what the camera sets according to how it is configured, is irrelevant.