reflective spot meter

Dave Plake · April 16, 2005

could one of you ansel adams' school me on this spot meter? Should I expose for the 18% grey card, and then look at my scene and decide to stop down or open up depending upon the main subject, or shadows that I want detail in, or the brightest spots vs the blackest and then cut the difference? Any suggestions?

Kevin Zanit · April 16, 2005

A spot meter simply measures how much light a subject reflects back to the camera (assuming your reading is taken from the camera position).

Thus a black object will reflect less light. Your spot meter will give a reading that tells you how to render the black object middle gray. The black object is not middle gray, it is black, so you would want to stop down from the reading you get.

A whit object reflects a lot of light, thus your meter will tell you to stop down to render white as middle gray. You would open up some to counter this.

The above illustrates why a spot meter requires you to do a lot of interpretation of what you are reading.

Essentially a spot meter on a gray card should give you the same reading as an incident meter in the position of the gray card.

Kevin Zanit

J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR · April 16, 2005

Somewhere there is a link to an article about light meter readings written by an ASC guy. Anybody have that? It would be a good place for Dave to start.

There are many ways to employ a spot meter some of which Kevin has pointed out. I generally use the spot to tell me where things fall against the incident reading. I sometimes use a gray card to set an exposure when there is a very strong back or side light. Any way you employ it, it all comes down to interpretation.

Kevin Zanit · April 16, 2005

If we are talking about the same article, it is by Gerald Hirschfeld, ASC and can be found here:

http://www.sekonic.com/Cinematographer_booklet.pdf

Kevin Zanit

Rolfe Klement · April 17, 2005

I was once told you have to learn what is 18% grey in a scene - so when you have time use the incident meter and get a reading then use a spot meter and check what matches (green grass - the dark blue section of skies and clouds etc etc)

Or use the spot meter on a grey card and then figure of what matches by spot metering loads the whole scene

It takes time and 8 years later I am only a little better at it

The other way is to get an understanding of the zone system and the exposure range (latitude) of your film (reversal and neg have different lats) then check the brightest and darkest bits - work an average or figure of what you want to see based on corrections using the zone system

One of the more complicated bits of photography...

thanks

Rolfe

Kevin Zanit · April 17, 2005

It doesn?t need to be that complicated.

The zone system was intended for stills photographers who had a lot more control in the lab then we do (cinematographers).

Just spot meter an area you are curious about and interpret what you get.

I meter a scene for about a minute, if that. I set my "key" light (the light that I want exposed as "normal"). I will meter that, and just light around it. If you know your key light is a 5.6 then anything brighter will be more than a 5.6 and anything darker will be under a 5.6. Not that complicated because you can essentially see the differences in brightness.

It is important to not be a slave to your meter and to really use your eyes more than anything else.

I hardly ever use a spot meter because I don?t like reading 1 degree areas of my scene, and than having to interpret that. I take incident readings almost exclusively.

For me, once I know my key, if I spot something and it is an 8 I just know that is reflecting back to camera 1 stop more light, thus it will be twice as bright. If I am okay with that, then I move on, if I am not, I will drop a double in it or something.

Kevin Zanit