One of the most profitable pieces of equipment a professional photographer can own is also one of the least used today. It can be simple to use while being relatively affordable to purchase and can elevate your lighting immediately.
Jeff Rojas has been providing easy-to-understand tutorials for a long time, and he has a very simple breakdown for using a light meter, especially if you’re a photographer that is using artificial lighting. Breaking down lighting for some photographers is a class in itself, and it becomes more complicated as we add additional lights for a subject. To give a bit more on the breakdown on the lighting in the video, Rojas is only using one light to create the the image.
A light meter is an essential tool for making changes to your lighting quickly and easily. You can direct the mood of an image simply by using certain ratios in a two-or-more light setup. You can confirm light falloff or uniformity on a backdrop quickly by using a light meter. Creating consistent rim and accent lighting is a piece of cake with a light meter and confirms your setup before a model or client ever stands on set. It’s a tool that directly helps you capture your vision and increases your understanding of lighting with its use.
Do you currently use a light meter for quick and easy lighting set ups? Are you looking at purchasing a light meter like a Sekonic L-308X-U Flashmate anytime soon?
"One of the most profitable pieces of equipment..." how?
As one one of the few people I know that still use a light meter on occasion. I shoot tethered 80% of the time and barely grab the meter. I know my lights well enough I'm dialed in within 1 or 2 shots by chimping off the monitor. Even pre-lighting with a meter I'll still adjust to taste off the screen. The biggest benefit is shooting outside where sun inhibits viewing, especially if you are stuck without a tether setup.
To explain, profitable is not only money but also the value of your's and other's time, and the requirements to not need to re-shoot. First, if you're shooting an executive or other high profile client, you will not have the time to perfect your lighting by eye. They are paying for your talent and how expeditious you are as the client's time is valuable. Light meters also allow us to shoot for skin tone correctly and avoid re-shoots. Caucasian skin for example is on average a 36% grey and by that measure you could over expose by 1 1/3 stops and still pull back the exposure. This actually isn't correct as the red channel in most caucasian skin will be over exposed at only 1/2 stop overexposed. When you attempt to pull back the image in post, there will be a loss of saturation in those areas (like nose, cheek, and chin hot spots) as you only have the green and blue channels to recover. Lastly, a light meter can teach you about light, especially in an outside scene. Will your light be able to overpower the amount of light in a scene from 10 feet away? You can easily measure to find out and create a ratio with a light meter in this instance. By eye you can only guess a 3:1 or a 4:1 ratio but you can't confirm this until after you shoot the scene which isn't good for you nor the talent/ client. That last value is to you, the artist, so you create with intention. As photographer's we are problem solvers just as much as artists, and if a fairly inexpensive tool can make the application of your talent that much more consistent and repeatable, it is absolutely valuable and profitable for those making photography a career.
I'm a commercial photographer. There are alot of ways to respond to this, but I'll chose none of them.
Now I know what you do here. :-)
I can get my lighting right in like 2 shots max. So a light meter would save me two shots? Really doesn't help me to have one.
Suppose you take a shot with the settings that your light meter says are "right". But you look at it and you FEEL that something isn't right... So what would you do? Accept that photo because your tool said it was right or do another shot to better suit your liking and YOUR VISION?
I did mostly this CEO and Fashion shit, always had a light meter around my neck ... to look more professional, I mean I know my lights and modifiers, I build setup up to 6 or more flashes and never needed it, it is even more in the way when you start using it and takes so much longer. when you know your lights, you never need more than 2 exposures to get the light right
At one time I had 5 meters. Now for some reason I have 2, the only time a meter has been absolutely profitable was when I sold them on Craigslist.
If I am shooting an executive or high profile subject (not client, for me, clients are not the subject) I will already have my lighting dialed in because I showed up 1/2 hour early to set up and I am ready to go. So there is no wasting of the subject's (or my) time. When setting up, did I use a light meter? 98% chance of no.
You lost me on the 38% skin tone red channel stuff but if you have to reshoot because the exposure is that far off you've blown out the skintones, there's another issue.
I am not sure how making multiple meter readings and calculating math ratios in you head (or app?) is such a time saver over seeing exactly what the light is doing by shooting a couple test shots. I am not afraid of my subjects, so if it takes a couple xtra minutes to re arrange a couple lights after a test shot, it is as much part of the game as taking 5 or 6 meter readings. If the subject wants to see what it looks like I'll show them the laptop or the LCD screen not the meter reading.
I know I have not used a meter this year but did use one last year when I shot with my Noblex pano film camera.
PS, Martin has made a brilliant point, by wearing the light meter it signifies authority :)
Another advertisement hiding as an article this site is infamous for.
In all fairness I think Sekonic is the only name in the game anymore.
And why might that be?
Gossen, Kenko, Spectra Cine....
That link to one particular light meter did come across as a non sequitur, didn't it!
I'm not trying to be a jerk, it comes naturally ;-), but according to your bio and photos here, and on your website, there's no evidence you've ever set foot in a studio. That's fine. If that's the case, and I don't know for sure it is, you don't know any better than anyone else, which is also fine because you're linking to someone else's video who may know what he's talking about. I'm just wondering, https://youtu.be/StIcRH_e6zQ
;-)
I know some people dont like to use it. Fair enough. I use it all the time in the studio and it is fast and quick without ever having to touch the camera once for prelighting. For finessing the light we then do test shots.
In big studio spaces with 10 strobes or more it comes in very handy. But everyone should use the method he likes best.
Just remember each camera has a different "real" ISO correlating the light meter. From my experience different 5DM4 bodies and PhaseOne models were spot on. Nikon half a stop off. Fuji almost everytime 1 stop off. Either you calibrate it (which is cumbersome) or you just keep it in your head or tweak the ISO.
Photography is obviously a visual medium, as is painting. If i, as the artist, can see what I want in my mind and see the result immediately on my "canvas", why do I need a meter to tell me what I can see?
Because you camera turns photons into electrons out of your control, and doesn't "see" what you see. So measuring prevents you from trusting the shitty JPEG preview your camera has baked for you depending on what the Canikon engineers think is a "good-looking" picture. As they adjust levels and curve, you don't know what your RAW looks like at the time you shoot. So I would rather trust a calibrated sensor on that matter than a screen preview.
Uh, I shoot tethered, so I'm not looking at the back of the camera. I see my shot on a 4K monitor. It's pretty cool, you might try it sometime. ;-)
Already tried and don't like it. It kills the flow of a portrait session, plus you get the wire in the way or break the bank with wireless transmitters. The old lightmeter way is less hassle and less money overall.
Yeah, it seriously disrupts Peter Hurley's workflow. #eyeroll
If you can't keep a USB cable out of the frame you have much larger problems.
The USB cable is in my feet, not in my frame, and I didn't know we had to be Hurley's minions. Most people are disturbed by their picture on the screen during the shoot, when you just want them to forget about the camera and relax. I don't see how it is a good setup for portraits… And I don't shoot beer bottles.
The tethering is there for the photographer, not the client/subject.
I have been using a Sekonic L-358 for the last 5+ years. As my eyes and camera body screens get older it is proving more and more valuable on jobs.
The meter has been calibrated and gives me consistency across all 3 bodies ( 5D Mark II). The screen on my main body is darker than the other two bodies at the same brightness setting and whilst I have it noted as a mental note the meter equals the playing field.
Best thing is I picked up the meter for £90 used. It's more than paid for itself.
In my opinion, a light meter is the same useless tool as "Levels"; it tells you that your image "looks right". But does it? Or do you have to look for something or someone to tell you that your image looks right? Can't you see it by yourself? Then practice more. Photography is an art, not by-the-numbers activity. Waiting for a light meter or "Levels" to tell you that your image is right means that you don't have a vision and you don't know what you want to create. And the more you rely on those tools, the longer will be the process of becoming a photography artist.
I don't think meters tell you anything aesthetically about your image. All it's telling you is, based on the basic parameters that you have in mind for your image, when you're in the ballpark. If the image I have in my head calls for, say, f/2 for creamier bokeh ( don't laugh :) ) and I want the background light levels lower, say 1/1600, and I want ISO 50, my meter will get me there quicker. Now, once I take a shot and things are off by 1/2, 1/3 or 1 stop I can and usually adjust my power settings. I will admit, though, that once I get those readings, and something aesthetic changes, with most other things being equal, I don't need to remeter that shot. I just need to do some "math" and I'm still in the ball park.
What you see on the camera screen is already edited by the camera firmware, so you can only guess what you will get in RAW on the computer.
As a guy who shoots with strobes, without modeling lights, the lightmeter helps me setting and balancing the power of the strobes in a non-WYSIWYG environment. Then I look at the test-shots on the screen and set the position and proximity of the strobes, depending on the shadows I get.
I try to avoid doing the same lightings again and again, so it's a bit different everytime, and the lightmeter gives me a nice reproductibility to set things up efficiently even if it's always different. It's not about reading numbers, it's about checking whites are whites, not greys, and adjusting the lightsources efficiently. Then, you do another round of visual/perceptual fine-tuning. 10 minutes later, you're good to go.
Photography is a technically-determined medium. It's art made possible by science : your camera basically convert photons to electrons. The art is in the way you use it, but the science is the way it works, and it's nice to be able to mix and understand both to make the best out of it.
"What you see on the camera screen is already edited by the camera firmware, so you can only guess what you will get in RAW on the computer."
Wrong! There's this (not so) new thing called tethering. You get to see the *gasp* actual exposure.
Crazy, huh?
Maybe tethering is not the Holy Grail of every photographer out there, I think we all know now you work with tethering ;)
Yes, and we all shoot on location with a 4K monitor, that makes you mobile and low-profile. And we all shoot digital, I mean who are the morons who still work with medium-format film ?
or wet plate collodion... (Is a large format camera's viewfinder considered a 19th century 4K screen?)
Naturally, when I began photographing 50 years ago, we ALL used hand held light meters. You had to. What we learned after about 2-3 years of daily use was that after a while you could read the light in 85% of the scenes you were shooting in by eye (for a particular ISO setting -- we almost always called meter readings for ISO 400). I can still walk into any room in any illumination (that would permit reading level light) and tell you the exposure within about 1/2 stop by eye.
This was a skill we acquired. The benefit is manifold. With current cameras having metering built in, you can know immediately prior to snapping whether what the camera tells you makes sense. Your eye becomes that more sensitive to the way light dresses a subject, and that's a very good thing.
When you don't have time to waste, do it right the first time.
"That was a skill we acquired". The question remains : would you have acquired it without a meter ?
Really? :)
Amazing how lathered up all the comment section experts get. There is no one right way to do anything. There are just different ways of doing the same thing.
True but it is statements like this "... it is absolutely valuable and profitable for those making photography a career." that made me respond.
Savages on here. I heard that if I keep in under 1/200th of a second I won't get the black bar across my screen in the studio. When I learned that I stopped using a light-o-meter. One time I shot at 1/400th and I ended up needing to photoshop it out of all 200 of my photos. It was a horrible experience. Needless to say my clients weren't happy about my images. You live and learn.