How do you guys incident meter your scene?

[silvan schnelli]

Do you have the dome in or out, do you point it towards the light or towards the camera, do you block off light with your hands? And for your method of metering please explain why?

Example 1:

For example let say you have a fill light from on top which should give a slight cool light and a key from the side.

Would you meter the fill facing the light or facing the camera and what about the key.

Example 2:
Or what I often think about is when you have a key light and then a hard backlight that either spills as a sort of rim or kicker, how would you meter this intensity?

Or do you guys prefer setting exposure with the spot meter. I hear that spot meters are more for last minute adjustments and corrections, and placing of certain exposures in the scene and that’s how I tend to try to use it.

[Mark Dunn]

Point the dome towards the light, and you measure the lights separately so that you can establish the lighting ratio. So, shade with the hand so that only one light is being measured at a time.

A rim light would typically be brighter than the key, but I'll let others (preferably David) say by how much.

I don't know what you mean by 'dome in or out'. It should be fitted as specified by the meter manufacturer.

A spot meter reading has to be interpreted according to the reflectance of the subject, so I wouldn't be using it to determine exposure as such.

[Brian Drysdale]

Regarding dome in or out, that could possibly refer to reflected light readings with it off. If taking luminance readings, e.g. foot candles, this has a flat surface, rather than the dome used for incident meter exposure readings.

[David Mullen ASC]

I will shade the dome from a backlight but otherwise the light on the key side is the key + fill so it's better to let them both hit the dome.  You can shade the key if you want to meter the fill separately.

[Tyler Fukuda]

By dome in or out, I presume you have something like a Sekonic where you can turn the outer edge ring and retract the lumisphere? If so, then you'd typically measure the light with the dome extended out.

If you want, you could turn on each light one by one and meter them separately. Meter your key light, then turn it off and meter your fill and etc. It's a slower process but you can at least know what each unit is doing. Using your spot meter is a bit different because you may have two people in the frame, and you go to spot one and your meter tells you f/2 whereas your other may be a f/4. 

If you use your incident meter it's sort of unbiased and is only telling you what the light falling onto the scene is. I think spot meters are better when something is far away and you just want to quickly grab exposure without running around.