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Incident meter for street shooting


Derick Crucius

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Hey everyone,

I havent posted in some time, but I wanted to ask a few questions about incident readings. Up until now i've been using light meter apps for my Iphone in reflected mode with pretty decent results, but I was recently given a Sekonic incident meter. 

I'd love to use this because from my understanding, incident readings are more precise, but the main thing is that I mostly shoot street/docu & landscapes. How would I go about taking an incident reading if I cant get close to my subject? Also, when compared to the readings my reflected meter (phone app) gives me, my incident readings seem very "overexposed"....By like 2 sometimes 3 stops over, Is this normal? I've compared the sekonic with other handheld meters and it seems to match.

Thanks in advance!

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You might read up a bit first on the basic ideas of incident and reflected meters. 

For the incident and reflected readings to match, the reflected meter needs to read off 18% grey. An A4 grey card may be big enough. A small piece of grey card with a spot meter is more convenient.  Need to test what the angle of view is with the reflected meter so you can have a big enough field of grey to meter.

If the subject is far away, but you can put the incident meter in identical light conditions, you can take a reading.  For the reflected reading, a spot meter helps. You may find something in the frame that is close to 18% grey.  Or, once again,  if you are in light identical with that of your subject, you can aim your reflected/spot meter at a grey card.

Spot meters are a great way to explore and learn about tonality within the frame. A small piece of 18% grey card in your back pocket is useful to occasionally remind your eye/mind what you are referencing to.

My two cents. Opinions may vary.

Edited by Gregg MacPherson
"within the frame" typo
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Proper light metering would require me to write a chapter here, which I'm not going to do ?

I'm sure you can google some great articles on line.

That said, to use the incident meter, one need not be close to the subject, but one must read the light somewhere where the light is at the same level as the subject.

For landscape type shots, a reflective meter is much more valuable as you need to read the sky, then maybe a person in a shadow, and through experience determine a correct exposure for the effect you want.

In other words, light meters do not give you the correct exposure.  The photographer, using the data from the light meter, determines the correct exposure by their experience and knowledge of the capture medium.  So... There's no easy answer I'm afraid.

For me, I usually use my incident meter for lighting the set and roughing in the light levels.  It also helps me communicate with the gaffer about the level of light that I require for the scene.  With digital capture, especially, I adjust the fine light levels by eye, and using a monitor and or waveform display of the simulated final output of the scene.

When shooting day exteriors, where access to a good monitor is not practical, I often use the incident meter to rough in a camera exposure that I know will be in the correct ball park for color correction later.  For high contrast landscape type exteriors, I will sometimes pull out my spot meter to measure different parts of the frame and determine an exposure that way.

I do have years of experience using spot meters and incident meters for film photography, so I have a pretty good feel for it now ?

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1. Stupid for me to say but have you dialled in the same iso/asa in the phone app and the light metre....its a simple mistake to make if you don't normally use light metres. I use the LUMU adapter to iPhone (mainly for colour of light as K values) and it's incident light readings are accurate to my Sekonic.....I don't use it for spot meter readings......

2. Incident light more precise? both are accurate if you know how to use them. There is a lot of information on how to take your light metre abilities to another level.

On 10/23/2019 at 9:15 PM, Derick Crucius said:

Hey everyone,

I havent posted in some time, but I wanted to ask a few questions about incident readings. Up until now i've been using light meter apps for my Iphone in reflected mode with pretty decent results, but I was recently given a Sekonic incident meter. 

I'd love to use this because from my understanding, incident readings are more precise, but the main thing is that I mostly shoot street/docu & landscapes. How would I go about taking an incident reading if I cant get close to my subject? Also, when compared to the readings my reflected meter (phone app) gives me, my incident readings seem very "overexposed"....By like 2 sometimes 3 stops over, Is this normal? I've compared the sekonic with other handheld meters and it seems to match.

Thanks in advance!

 

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