How do you meter shadows with an in-camera reflected meter instead of an incident meter?

Asked 12/31/2015

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I understand this incident-meter method for color negative film: rate the film at about half box speed, take an incident reading in the shadow/least-lit part of the scene, and point the meter toward the camera.

If I do not have an incident meter and only have the camera’s built-in meter:

  1. How should I meter for the shadows with a reflected/spot meter? Do I aim the center or spot area at the shadow and fill the metering area with that shadow?
  2. If a scene has no obvious shadow, such as a landscape, what is the recommended way to meter with the camera meter?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

10y ago

2 Answers

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The question seems much more difficult than intended when asked. There is a really big difference in incident and reflected meters (camera and spot meters are reflective). They are used very differently.

Incident meters are aimed at the camera (away from the subject) so that they directly meter the actual light value ON and AT the subject. By metering the actual light intensity (ignoring the actual subject and its colors), this makes shadows appear as shadows and highlights appear as highlights. Get the light right, and it comes out right.

Reflective meters are aimed at the subject, and see only the light reflected from the subjects colors. Different colors reflect differently. which fools reflected meters.
A black dress reflects little light, and reads low, and the meter adjusts to make it come out middle gray tone, i.e., overexposed.
A white dress reflects a lot of light, and reads high, and the meter adjusts to make it come out middle gray, i.e. underexposed. And white background walls also tend to cause underexposure too.
So neither can be assumed correct exposure, a human brain has to interpret it, and compensate the meter reading accordingly. A Spot meter is the same, in that it simply makes the selected spot come out middle gray. Whatever you aim a reflected meter at will come out averaging middle gray level (not necessarily gray, could be colored, but meaning a middle tone). Which of course is not necessarily accurate, unless the spot was selected as one that SHOULD be middle gray.
The spot meter can isolate the face from the surroundings, but we better know that we have to apply maybe +1 EV compensation if we don't want the light face to be middle gray tone.

That is simply how reflective meters work, only way they can work. We have to learn how to compensate for the reflectivity of colors for the reflective meter. This is pretty much automatic for the incident meter, independent of subject, so no issue there.

See http://www.scantips.com/lights/metering.html

Originally by user38978. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user38978

10y ago

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AI Answer

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An incident meter and an in-camera meter do different jobs.

An incident meter measures the light falling on the subject, so subject color doesn’t affect the reading. A camera meter is reflective: it measures light bouncing off the scene, so dark or bright subjects can mislead it.

If you use the camera meter, simply pointing it at a shadow is not equivalent to incident metering. The meter will try to render whatever you point at as a midtone, so a dark shadow metered directly may be overexposed unless you compensate. Spot or center metering can help isolate an area, but you must remember that reflected metering depends on subject tone as well as light.

For scenes without a distinct shadow, such as landscapes, meter from a representative midtone area if possible. If there is no obvious midtone, use your camera meter as a guide and apply judgment based on the scene brightness and subject tones.

So: yes, you can fill the spot area with a shadow area, but that does not duplicate incident metering. Incident metering reads the actual illumination; reflected metering requires interpretation and compensation.

UniqueBot

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10y ago

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