charlienow Loc: Hershey, PA

I am wondering if a light meter is better than digital camera meters today. If they are better, why?

Say Cheese Loc: Eastern PA

I believe the application of the hand held light meter is different. If you are doing a studio shot and you want the background flash to be 1 stop less than the main flash, the hair light 1/2 stop brighter and a side light 1 stop more than the main. It is much easier to do with a hand held Gossen than a camera. But with a digital camera you can take many shots costing you nothing. After 20 or 30 shots varying the lights you may find what you are looking for.

charlienow Loc: Hershey, PA

so, in the digital world are hand held light meters used mostly in studio lighting setup.

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

It depends but in my opinion a light meter is better for a few reasons, one being this: it spits out a value. It tells you what the value of that light source is at that distance away from the subject. You can repeat the set up or situation and get repeatable results because you have an actual number instead of "that looks pretty good right there..." and then you have no idea what you just did.

Another upside to using a hand held meter is that after shooting many situations, you can get to know your lighting gear; you know that your Yngnuo flash will give f/5.6 at 24" on half power...you know that because you've done it 50 times. It won't change. You don't reinvent the wheel each time you shoot things...you use what you know.

Just surf the threads called "what happened to my exposure???" to see how a camera's meter can be so easily fooled. There are at least a couple of those threads every week here.

I also believe for non-flash photography it's better too. I'm probably in the minority.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

IMHO, you've got a perfectly good one already in your camera. Just put it into Program or Auto mode, hit focus and see what the camera suggests. Modify to suit.

BebuLamar

A typical hand held meter are different from the camera meter in the following ways.
1. None of the hand held meter offers matrix or evaluative metering.
2. Hand held meter with spot metering has 1 degree spot which is smaller than built in meter except when you use long lenses.
3. Hand held meter can display the exposure in 1/10 of a stop versus 1/3 stop with built in meter.
4. Hand held meter can have incident mode and none of the camera has this mode although one can put a dome on the lens or use gray card to approximate.
5. Hand held meter can measure flash.

You decide for yourself whether to have or use a light meter.

LoneRangeFinder Loc: Left field

I agree. I have four or five hand-held meters, an app on my iPhone, and a meter in every camera I own. The latest cameras have great metering—and here’s the thing: you can make the same evaluative decisions based on the recommended metering from the camera as you could from a handheld meter. You just have to experience various lighting situations just as you would with a film camera...and then you modify as needed.

RWR Loc: La Mesa, CA

My Luna Pro is indispensable about 75% of the time. For the remaining 25% I use cameras with built-in meters.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

Like many other kinds of photographic equipment and accessories,with even the finest meter or built-in camera's metering system, the quality or usefulness of the instrument is only as good as the photographer's technique.

Hand held exposure meters are extremely useful in many instances. There are 3 types; incident light, reflected light and reflected light spot meters. There are also combinations of theses types. In all cases, the metering technique is of the utmost importance in securing accurate exposure readings. With ordinary reflected light meters it is important to know from which place or "zone" in or on the subject to sample the reflected light. There usually is a prescribed distance from the meter to the subject and the meter must be held at a position and angle where it will not read its own shadow or that of the operator. Some photographers will sample from a skin tone when making portraits, other will use an 18% gray card or improvise by reading from an area that approximates 18% reflection. You can make multiple readings and average them out or make specific highlight, shadow, or middle tone samplings to obtain a special effect. You can do the same with a spot meter but from a further distance from the subject and make more precise readings in that the meters optical system has a very narrow angle of acceptance. Some spot meter can read from a 1 or 5 degree angle of acceptance alternatively.

An incident light meter usually collects light, striking the subject, via a translucent dome that accepts light from omni-directions and integrates it into a value that approximates. 18%. The meter is placed at the subject and the dome is aimed at the camera. Theses meter are especially useful in studio work, not only for determining exposure but establishing lighting ratios and balanced between various light sources. They are also very useful in determining flash fill ratios when combing ambient and flash light sources. Some incident light meter accept interchangeable light collectors, domes for integrated readings and flat discs for directional readings. There are also conversion grids that enable reflected readings with incident type meters.

Built in camera metering systems are essentially reflected light structures which, in their simplest form work like spot meters. A center weighted system, will sample light form the center of the frame with a specified angle of acceptance. Experienced photographers will make a reading form a specific area or zone in or on the subject, lock in the reading and then recompose the image to suit the desired framing or composition.

The of course there are many more sophisticated and newfangled kinds of internal metering systems that can sample light from various sections of the field of view and average them out and Lord know what else. Perhaps I am too "old school" for most of that so, when using my camera's metering system I adhere to the spot and lock in method. Certainly for casual shooting theses programmed TTL modes can work decently, however, in many cases, I have found that they suffer from "subject failure", that is they sample the light form the wrong zone and cause inaccurate exposure. This usually occurs in more difficult or tricky lighting conditions such as strong back lighting.

I will admit that the TTL system on my Canon 5D MarkII cameras work exceptionally well both in ambient light, flash and combined modes- Again, for many casual or fast action shooting situations. When you understand how theses systems work or "think" you will know when and how to override them.

In many instances and especially in difficult or tricky lighting, the meter or metering system can get you well into the "ballpark" but bracketing exposures is still advisable. Even if the image look OK on the camera LCD screen or jibes on the histogram, you might,however, find in editing that an alternative exposure is better for the effect you wish to achieve. With experience, there are many occasion that you will second-guess your meters and mostly, you will be right. Getting consistently successful exposures is a combination of good metering technique, interpreting your readings and using you previous experiences.

Many hand held meters can be used with continuous light and flash. Some older models will do one or the other.

Most meters can be calibrated according to the photographer's individual exposure methods or coordinated with some camera's metering systems.

In the film era, I always kept my meters on hand, especially handy if the camera's metering failed. Nowadays, if the electronics fail or malfunction, the entire camera becomes inoperable.

I use 2 older Minolta meters, a more current Sekonic model and my very old Luna-Six.

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

Today's camera's take a REFLECTED LIGHT reading, ie. the camera reads the light reflected from the subject. The best way to meter for light is with in INCIDENT light meter, it reads the light that REACHES the subject (much more accurate). That said, today's camera's give you many options, one is MATRIX metering, the camera takes several readings from different parts of the frame and uses a computer in the camera to come up with the correct exposure, but you also have many more options, one is CENTER WEIGHTED metering (this reading is usually around 40-60 % reading in the middle of the image), then you have SPOT metering, and this one is usually around 5-10% of the center of your image.When I did professional photography I used an incident light meter. As a retired pro shooting wildlife, I use center weighted metering on my camera.
But to answer your question, an incident light meter takes a truer exposure reading than a camera's metering system. But Matrix metering will get you very close and without the hassel of carrying around a light meter.
You can also use MANUAL metering once you get serious.

CanonTom Loc: Birmingham

E L,

I so enjoy each and every post you do on this forum. While I often do not completely understand the depth of your comments, I learn from you each and everytime you post. Thank you so much for the assistance you provide. I am extremely pleased you have decided to remain here at UHH. Tom

BebuLamar

EL I had my camera meter failed but it still worked perfectly if you know the exposure settings and set them manually. I such case a hand held meter is useful. Although I did the shooting by guessing and chimp and it was fine.

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

I have to assume that you are talking about hand held exposure meters. Although incident light meters come only as hand held there are also reflective type of hand held meters that can be used also as a spot meter. There are spot meters, hand held, that are superior to the spot meter in camera.
Believe me, modern in camera meters are super accurate and I am not saying hand held meter are not. It is very convenient having the meter in camera which means on assignment you do not need to carry the hand held meter although I know many persons use it. Keep in mind that incident hand held meters are also excellent to meter flashlight.
The biggest advantage of in camera meter is that you can immediately look at the histogram and have a very good idea of where you are standing regarding the exposure. The spot meter in camera used with a tele offers such a small angle of acceptance that it compares pretty well with the hand held spot meter. Spot meters in camera usually read 3% of the whole frame and I am talking about Nikon meters.
Incident light meters offer a very accurate exposure but you have to use them in the same light as the subject. They are useless for sunsets and sunrises.
I know the exposure meters of my camera and spot is what I use the most.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

The meter in a camera is reflective type. It measures the light being reflected off of the subject. As a result, it's influenced by the tonality of the subject. You need to make a judgement how much subject tonality is skewing the reading use exposure compensation to adjust for it.

Handheld accessory meters can be reflective, too... But there also are incident meters that work differently. An incident meter instead measures the light falling onto the subject and, as a result, don't need to use exposure compensation. You still might want to skew the settings a bit, but it's not to correct for reflective errors. It's for other reasons, such as making a high key image or a silhouette.

There are other, specialized types of accessory meters... such as 1 degree spot (reflective), which folks using a zone system might choose.

A lot of incident meters also can be used to measure the very short duration of a flash or studio strobe. Most modern camera in-camera systems can meter a dedicated flash, too. However, the way they measure (and control) it is different. Often what they do is fire a low-power "pre-flash" that's used to measure how much illumination is needed, and then fire the "real" flash during exposure. This occurs really quickly, so folks often don't realize the flash is actually firing twice. And there can be problems with that, such as in multi-flash setups where the remote units are being triggered optically and fire when they detect another flash going off. When that happens, the remote flashes are tripped too early, before the shutter is open to record the image, and exposure is incorrect. In-camera systems also generally cannot meter and control larger studio strobe lighting. That has to be set up using an accessory meter.

With flash, you get the same issues reflective versus incident, too... Using the camera's system to measure and control flash as opposed to using an accessory, incident flash meter. Same as with ambient light, when measuring it reflectively, the tonalities of the subject effect the meter and it's often necessary to adjust using flash exposure compensation.

Incident/flash meters also can give readings with a very high level of accuracy.... Many of them can be set to read out in 1/10 stop increments. The in-camera system usually reads in less precise 1/3 stop or 1/2 stop increments.

So, if incident meters are so great, why not just build them into cameras, instead of reflective meters? Well, if you think about it, that's not practical. The camera is metering "TTL" or "through the lens". An incident meter is often used near the subject instead (especially with flash). That's also not always practical.... Most folks aren't going to walk up to a grizzly bear to take a meter reading and it might not be wise to stroll onto an active race track to measure the light conditions. It IS possible to take an incident reading of ambient light from a distance... but only if you're standing in the same light as the subject and are careful about how you orient the light meter when taking the reading. So there really are places where either type meter may be necessary and the other type won't work well or a all.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

My personal preference is a handheld light meter. However, I have "trained" my camera to emulate the result I get with my handheld meter. The meter I have is programmable and can be profiled to meter based on my camera's RAW capabilities. These are substantially different than the camera's jpg preview. I use any one of several that I have and choose which based on what I'm planning to photograph.
--Bob