Hand Held Light Meter: I am interested in hearing from those who are using a hand held light meter. If you are a landscape photographer and feel that it truely makes a difference in...

sharkman53

I am interested in hearing from those who are using a hand held light meter. If you are a landscape photographer and feel that it truely makes a difference in your images. I am currently shooting with a Nikon D3s, and have heard a mixture of opinions on this subject. Most feel that the meters in camera are good enough and there is no need for a held held meter.

Thanks for your help

loguey Loc: Osteen FL

sharkman53 wrote:

I am interested in hearing from those who are using a hand held light meter. If you are a landscape photographer and feel that it truely makes a difference in your images. I am currently shooting with a Nikon D3s, and have heard a mixture of opinions on this subject. Most feel that the meters in camera are good enough and there is no need for a held held meter.

Thanks for your help

Welcome to UHH.... What hand held meter are you using?

ebaribeault Loc: Baltimore

The meters in the cameras are quite good. I have a hand held light meter also use it for portraits taken outside and flower photos as a check. Most of the time the camera and hand held read the same.

Zerbphlatz Loc: Southern New Hampshire

I don't have a light meter, so can't help you out on that one. I sort of thought that light meters were more for portrait and close up shots. I could be wrong

But Welcome to the forum anyway!

OnDSnap Loc: NE New Jersey

I still use my 30yr.+ old Gossen Luna Pro...

Bunny-Jean Loc: Wisconsin

Welcome Sharkman!!!!

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

I use one for everything possible; landscapes included but there are situations where it's not the right tool...i.e. sunset's etc where a spot meter on the sky is a better choice.

IF what you're REALLY getting at is:

"Has the amazing light meter in the camera made having a separate light meter obsolete?"

Then my answer is; just check the UHH threads about exposure/blowout/underexposure issues and check all the conflicting advice given.

People do a great job without a hand held meter here...I'm not one of them. I find that I can get close enough to "save" exposure in Lightroom but that's not what I'm going for...half-a%$ exposure.

rfbccb Loc: Central Mississippi

Welcome to the "HOG".

OnDSnap Loc: NE New Jersey

Every Time I see HOG I have to check the forum I'm in...it's also the acronym for Harley Owners Group...both great forums.

silver Loc: Santa Monica Ca.

sharkman53 wrote:

I am interested in hearing from those who are using a hand held light meter. If you are a landscape photographer and feel that it truely makes a difference in your images. I am currently shooting with a Nikon D3s, and have heard a mixture of opinions on this subject. Most feel that the meters in camera are good enough and there is no need for a held held meter.

Thanks for your help

when it comes to digital photography using a digital camera an external light meter is completely redundant. There are too many built in ways of judging image quality with a good digital camera. Your desire to improve your imaging is admirable but the external meter is totally unnecessary.

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

silver wrote:

quote=sharkman53 I am interested in hearing from ... (show quote)

Plueezzeee....let's keep it at "preference" shall we?

If you PREFER to use the in-camera meter..that's cool...but

There are literally DOZENS of threads on this subject and the one thing that I know...hand held meters are more useful now than they ever have been.

Sure...I know that we can chimp and guess and stuff to get a good or "good enough" exposure..but that hardly means that an external meter is totally unnecessary...not by a long shot.

Just search "why did my egret blow out!" or "why did I over expose" or any of the other hundreds of threads where people can't figure out how to second guess their meter that made a very bad decision.

silver Loc: Santa Monica Ca.

rpavich wrote:

quote=silver quote=sharkman53 I am interested in... (show quote)

I have only one answer to this. By the time you take out your hand held light meter and taken a reading and adjusted the camera settings the egret will have flown away. Get a hood man, look at the LCD on the camera and shoot away. There is something called bracketing by the way. I come from a long history of B&W film photography and I have several external meters and when I do digital photography I never touch my hand held meter. I am not against hand held meters, I just cant see using one for digital photography when you have an LCD that you can easily read with a Hoodman and make a good judgement for exposure.

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

silver wrote:

quote=rpavich quote=silver quote=sharkman53 I a... (show quote)

I don't know why you have that problem but I don't. I never had this imaginary problem of fiddling with the meter while this amazing shot gets lost.

Whenever anyone brings up this fantasy I wonder if they've ever used a meter in the field.

mtnredhed Loc: The part of NorCal that doesn't move

sharkman53 wrote:

I am interested in hearing from those who are using a hand held light meter. If you are a landscape photographer and feel that it truely makes a difference in your images. I am currently shooting with a Nikon D3s, and have heard a mixture of opinions on this subject. Most feel that the meters in camera are good enough and there is no need for a held held meter.

Thanks for your help

I'm going to say for landscape (single frame), not so much. In any event, landscape vs. wildlife, you don't need to worry about the landscape flying off (mostly). Incident can be useful for pan shots where you need to fix your exposure across many frames. Also remember that reflective light meters (including your camera) assume everything is about 18% reflective and leave it up to you to bias the exposure based on what you're shooting.

If you're in high contrast lighting, a spot meter (1 degree) can be handy if you're trying to hold detail in deep shade or understand what range you'll need for HDR. That being said, I sold my Gossen Spotmaster but kept my Minolta incident meter.

I prefer to meter for studio lighting instead of keeping your model there while you pop, chimp and run back and forth to your lights. There's a little of that anyway, but a lot less. I realize that wasn't your question.

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

Example of how easy it is to use a meter for wildlife/landscape.

I went to the Pitt Zoo a month ago. It was overcast mostly.

I popped the meter when we got there and got a reading for "outside in the open"

I set my camera. I took numerous photos of all kinds of animals and as long as they were in the open light (not a cave or in dark shade)I didn't even have to LOOK at the camera meter moving around from shot to shot because I knew that the exposure didn't actually change just because I was pointing the camera at a Giraffe rather than the Zebra before.

When I went into the monkey enclosure I did the same; I metered for that environment. I used that setting and when I hit a new inside area; I metered again.

So I had 3 or 4 basic lighting settings for my camera as opposed to checking the meter for every shot and chimping and adjusting.

Here are the shots:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/68474098@N07/sets/72157629573269572/