Teach me how to get rid of the light meter

Why? It's like driving a car and saying I won't use the guage that tells me how much petrol is left. I'll just learn to approximate how far I've travelled, at what speed and 85% of the time I won't run out of juice.
 
Bill: An interesting and complete response. I agree that careful attention to exposure is important for a photograph of excellent quality, but I'm sure that you can agree that there are times when an "adequate" exposure is appropriate for a certain situation. It's nice to see you back in the community.


Ruben: I have a simple idea, which I haven't tried but seems like it might work. Use a meterless camera (or take out the batteries) and carry a handheld meter in your camera bag. When you arrive at your shooting location, make an educated exposure judgement based on past experience/sunny 16/etc. Then, take out the meter and verify it. Learn from the difference between your exposure and the recommended exposure. Eventually, you'll get good enough that the process of taking out the meter will become tiresome, and you will just start shooting. As Bill suggested, the exposures may not be ideal, but in most situations you should find them correct enough that the scene is both recognisable and printable.
 
This might help you. I forget where I copied it from.

SUNNY 16- On a bright sunny day, set your aperture on 16 and your shutter speed as close as possible to your films ISO rating. This will produce properly exposed pictures with all films and all film speed ratings.

F Stop Light Shadow
Conditions Detail

F16 Sunny Distinct
F11 Slight Overcast Soft around edges
F8 Overcast Barely visible
F5.6 Heavy Overcast No Shadows
 
The thing with Sunny 16, IME, is that when you first start using it, you keep wanting to check it against a "real" meter reading, because you think it can't possibly be that straightforward. I found that as soon as I stopped doing that, and just went with it, with a bit of judgment to tweak in trickier conditions, my unmetered exposures nearly always came out well enough, with b&w film at least. After all, Sunny 16 is a popular rule because, in practice, many people have found it usually works.

I still use a meter most of the time, but I don't re-meter for every shot, unless the light is changing a lot or I'm shooting something that I think warrants special attention, but I use Sunny 16 as the starting point for most of my judgments about likely exposure.

Ian
 
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Bill, intriguing anology, that compass thing..

In the same way lightmeters have evolved from a simple needle to multi-segment evaluative devices, compasses have morphed into the sat-navs you find on the dash in your car. But none of that matters if you don't first learn where you wanna go..
 
BJ Bignell said:
Bill: An interesting and complete response. I agree that careful attention to exposure is important for a photograph of excellent quality, but I'm sure that you can agree that there are times when an "adequate" exposure is appropriate for a certain situation. It's nice to see you back in the community.
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When exposure is not critical, or when one does not wish to take creative control, using auto-exposure or relying upon Sunny 16, etc, may well be good enough. Same can be said for auto-focus, and for the same reason - it is usually 'good enough' for many situations. I would not expect everyone to want to take complete control over their exposure for every photograph they take - I don't.

However, even though I agree that one does not need to rely on a map for every drive in the country, neither should one eschew maps as a reference and choose instead to use dead reckoning as a method likely to give good or consistant results. "That a ways" as a set of directions is great in movies, but it can make one late for appointments.

Therefore, I rely on meters, either through auto-exposure or through manual control, for my photography whenever I can, which is nearly always. When I cannot, I don't fret it. But I would not intentionally turn off my meter and attempt to guess correct exposure as a photographic method.

If one absolutely had to guess exposure and wanted to become good at guestimating, I'd refer to the method used before electric/electronic methods were available - the extinction meter.

http://www.photoethnography.com/Cla...meset.html?lightmeters-classic.html~mainFrame

http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm
 
If it's a really nice light meter, you could just send it to me. :D

Meterless old cameras drove me to use Sunny 16. I soon found that Sunny 22 is more like it (move to Arizona and see if I'm not right on that one).
The lesson hasn't eliminated my dependence on meters, but it has loosened me up quite a bit. I don't worry about it like I used to.
 
pvdhaar said:
Bill, intriguing anology, that compass thing..

In the same way lightmeters have evolved from a simple needle to multi-segment evaluative devices, compasses have morphed into the sat-navs you find on the dash in your car. But none of that matters if you don't first learn where you wanna go..
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Taking creative control over any aspect of your photography assumes two things. First, that you have some idea what it is you are attempting to achieve. And two, that you have some notion how this can be done.

A compass is a very useful tool, but it is pretty valueless if a person does not know how to employ it. That "it points north" is not that useful, although it is better than nothing.

Many of us have learned to take creative control over some aspects of our photography - rangefinder photographers in general are better informed and have made some intentional choices that require them to know more about their camera and about photography than simply pointing and shooting.

So, many of us are quite aware of why and when you might want to use selective focus techniques, for example. The average happy-snapper would never consider such things, nor do they really mind that their portrait backgrounds are in sharp focus and are thus distracting. Fine for them.

We take control of focus, we take control of composition, we intentionally choose the tools we are going to use based upon the type of photography we wish to engage in. Exposure is simply another aspect of photography that we can take control of if we wish, and as we wish. For some reason, very few of us venture into this realm of creative control - which surprises me somewhat, because the results can be dramatic and can allow one to really break from the pack in many ways. I suspect it may be due to the evil legacy of the Zone system tyranny.
 
dazedgonebye said:
If it's a really nice light meter, you could just send it to me. :D

Meterless old cameras drove me to use Sunny 16. I soon found that Sunny 22 is more like it (move to Arizona and see if I'm not right on that one).
The lesson hasn't eliminated my dependence on meters, but it has loosened me up quite a bit. I don't worry about it like I used to.
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Shady 5.6 is more like shady F4 in the British winter. If you have a good lightmeter use it. I'm familiar with sunny16 etc. but use it as a guide only plus it only works if iso and shutter speed exactly tally i.e. if you use 100 film the correct setting for sunny weather is 1/125 and F11 2/3 - knowing this will save a lot of confusion.
 
honestly, I don't really understand all the Leica affinicados who carry around an extremely sophisticated camera and are so keen on CLA them every half year or so and then don't take a light meter...

I am glad my well working Kiev 4s meter is working (well, in its own way...) and I'd love to have a little digisix for the Zorki and Fed. I even thaught of customising the Zorki 4 with a digital (spot) light meter... would be fun. but maybe all that is because i am so bad in math and just love to trust machines...
best, Michael
 
Back in the old days...when Kodak film ruled the western world and few of us had ever heard of Ilford and Fuji was the nickname for a mountain in Japan...judging exposure was a piece of cake. You used Kodak film...a given...and in each box of film was a data sheet. On one side of the data sheet were suggestions on processing the film in various EKCO chemicals.

On the other side of the data sheet was the good stuff: pictograms showing suggested exposure settings for shade, cloudy skies, sunny skies and beach/snow conditions. There was even a description of how shadows looked under the described lighting...hazy, distinct, etc.

If you followed Kodak's suggestions you shot a well-exposed roll of film. After a dozen times, you'd committed the settings to memory and you could go out with your Leica/Voightlander/Agfa/Zeiss Ikon/Contax and shoot away, confident that you were bringing home usable negatives.

That's how I learned "Sunny 16" and, I expect, the way most of us over 50 on the forum did.

dc3
 
I've never delved into the history of light meters. But I'm not sure they were especially accurate until the late '50s, early '60s, especially in low light. Most of the classic images from the RF era were taken without a light meter. Even early Kodachrome users, shooting ISO 10 in the 1950s, were largely working without light meters.

I remember reading an interview long ago with Cartier-Bresson in which the interviewer asked him to estimate exposures in several scenes in the room. Cartier-Bresson gave correct responses, which the interviewer verified with an incident meter.

If you learn to work without a meter, then that's one less piece of equipment getting in the way between you and the image you're trying to create.
 
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the thing is, there is no reason not to use a meter. it doesn't prove a thing if you don't use it. if you go out and shoot slides, can anyone really get it right the first try?

in the old days the meter was simple, now with all the advanced tech, almost any meter can do 1/10 stop. why not get a cheap one, do few readings, that you have confident at first try, stop guessing.
 
ClaremontPhoto said:
Ruben knows sunny 16. He said so already in the original post.

He wants to know how we apply it, and how we came to learn it.
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The way I see it, if you understand the principle, you can use it. I have a VCII that I adore, but I often forget to pack it.
Because I panic when confronted with logic and "if/then"s, I feed my Autocord - and my Great Wall - with Reala 100 (I love colour), set the shutterspeed to 1/125, and progress from there. It's an instinctive thing ("Oh! Little Cloud! f11!") but it works. Ten images out of twelve are perfectly-exposed.
And the other two were taken indoors. I should know better.
 
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I'm trying to teach myself to be less reliant on a meter for the simpler lighting scenarios. I'm using an M3 and it is nice not to have the clutter of LEDs in the viewfinder. I carry a Sekonic L-208 and periodically check light in full sun, full shade, partial shade. I'm finding this approach makes me think more about the lighting. In more complex lighting situations I will make my best guess then check with the meter. I don't see myself going completely meter-free but it is nice to be back to basics. I should add that I use b+w print film so the latitude masks most of my errors!
Cheers,
Nick
 
Some other milestones I've memorized for 400 speed film besides sunny 16 and shady 5.6:
institutional/office flourescent lighting: 1/60, f4
subject lit by windowlight during the day: 1/60, f4
home interior at night, lit by room lamps: 1/30, f2
 
ClaremontPhoto said:
Ruben knows sunny 16. He said so already in the original post.
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That's the problem, Ruben *knows* sunny 16, but apparently he hasn't use it yet, have you, Ruben?

I *learned* and *read* and *knew* about the Sunny-16 rule until my face is blue, but I was none the wiser :bang:

Until that fateful day that I forgot to load a battery on my OM-1 and I was forced to actually *use* it. And I've never been so glad I try it. Now I'm hooked :)

Sunny-16 is a guide, everything else beyond it is relative offset that your brain and experience teaches you. It's fun, just do it several times, only then, reading tips from people who has done it a lot will make sense.

How's this for getting to the point? :D
 
I agree with your points but please don't call Ansel Adams and the zone system soulless. Have you read his books? I found it to be anything but soulless and, in fact, it was a method to do visualizations with exactly the kind of creative work you're talking about.

I agree that the art of photography is knowing when to over-expose and underexpose according to one's "vision" for the scene. To do this properly you need to know what the average metering of a scene is according to a meter or the sunny 16 rules.

Thanks for all the information, especially Frank's. I've found it quite useful!

bmattock said:
This should probably be a separate post, but I'll reply as briefly as I can.

First, there is a common misconception that light meters tell us 'correct exposure'.

They do nothing of the sort.

First, because there is no such thing as an objective 'correct exposure' and second, because all they do is measure the light that strikes their sensor and report that value.

The fancier meters built into many cameras nowadays take light measurements from one or more points in a scene and apply canned logic to determine what is most likely to be a 'correct exposure' in many common cases.

This may or may not be what the photographer intends for any given photograph. And 'correct exposure' is the exposure that a photographer intends, nothing more and nothing less. We may critique a photograph and comment that it is 'over exposed' or 'under exposed' and we are referring to a commonly-accepted standard for exposure - in most cases, we're right. But that does not mean the photographer did not intend exactly the result achieved, in which case the exposure is correct.

So the meter without the human brain, coupled with an understanding of what exposure actually is, is useless.

However, the human brain, coupled with the human eye, is easily misled and lied to by the environment. It is part of our design to average, compensate, and make allowances. We can't determine proper exposure with our eyes alone. Those who believe they can are relying on a life's experiences with having guessed correctly more often than not, coupled with film's usual latitude that allows for some errors.

A properly-functioning light meter can inform me of what the correct exposure for middle-tone grey would be for the amount of light currently falling on the light sensor of the meter. It is up to me to make sure the light I want to measure is the light falling on that meter, and to interpret what that means in terms of the exposure I intend for that photograph.

Do not be a slave to the meter. But do not try to dig a hole without a shovel, either. Shovels are good tools; use them. Shovels without human brains to guide them are useless as well, so learn what exposure means.

It is my belief that proper exposure (meaning the exposure you intend, to give the effect you wish) is the least understood aspect of mastering photography.

We learn to focus. We learn to set shutter speed and f-stop to match a mechanical reading given by a light meter or a rule of thumb, and it will be 'correct' in the sense that the exposure will be more-or-less acceptable in most cases. Some of us go beyond that to learn composition, and some fewer learn the proper use of focus, shutter speed, and depth-of-field to obtain the effects they are after. A few of us learn the proper use of light modifiers such as filters and artificial light. We learn which films to use and when, what effects they give, and even darkroom technology or more lately, computer technology. Those who pursue large-format photography also try to learn the ways in which a photograph can be altered and controlled through the use of camera movements.

But few of us take the time to learn what exposure means and how it can be controlled under our will to give an effect we desire. We are either slaves to the light meter, or we are slavish disciples of Ansel Adams' Zone System; one is brain-dead and the other is soulless. Both consider proper exposure to be an objective standard that can be reached for any given scene, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Saying "I wish to learn photography without a light meter" is like saying you wish to learn orienteering without a compass. You may survive the wilderness, but it will be by luck as much as by skill, and for what purpose if you had a compass in your rucksack all the time?
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