[Title music] Woman 1: Adorama TV presents Digital Photography
one on one. Where we answer your questions. Here's your host, Marc Wallace. [Title music subsides] Marc Wallace: Hey everybody, welcome to this
week's episode of Digital Photography one on one.
I'm Marc Wallace. Well, we're continuing our series where we're
talking about metering. Specifically this week we're going to be talking about the basics
of metering with a light meter like this one. So let's start by looking at our question.
This week, we got a question from our overseas
friends. This one's from Christopher in Poland. And Christopher asks: [background music sets in] "How do you use a light meter to measure continuous
light and strobes?" [Background music ends] Well Christopher, with a light meter like
this one, metering is very simple. Just think of the exposure triangle.
In the exposure
triangle, you have aperture, shutter, and ISO. And those three things work together
to give you the correct exposure. With the light meter, you enter the ISO and
one other part of the exposure triangle, and the meter gives you the third part. For example:
you can enter the ISO and the shutter speed, and when you take a reading, the meter will
give you the correct aperture value.
Or you can enter the ISO and the aperture value,
and the meter will give you the correct shutter speed. Now remember, if you're metering studio strobes,
you'll always enter the ISO and the shutter speed, and the meter will give you the correct
aperture value. Well today, I'm using the Sekonic L-358 to
show you some of the modes that we have. And I highly recommend using Sekonic light meters,
because they're, I think, the best meters on the market.
You can't find one that's better. You'll want to take a look at these modes
here. Now, we have several modes and these are what you'll see at the top of your light
meter. We're going to go through these one by one.
The very first one here looks like
a sunshine. That is called daylight or ambient mode. And that's the mode that you would use
if you're metering anything that has continuous light. Like the sun, or if you have tungsten lights,
or if you have continuous lights in the studio that are always on, this is the mode that
you'll use.
It's a very common on all light meters. In fact all light meters have this.
And that's the one you'd use for constant light. Now, the next one is called... It's got a
little flash here on Sekonic meters...
It's called auto reset cordless flash metering,
or cordless flash mode. It's a mouthful, but really what this does, it allows your meter
to, you push your button and it waits, and it'll wait up to about 90 seconds and it's
waiting for a flash to fire. So it's really nice if you don't have a sync cable or a radio
trigger to use. We're going to actually go over this in one of our upcoming episodes
on advanced metering, using the Sekonic light meter.
Now, there's another one here, it's got a
little "C". And that's for corded flash. And this has been around for years and years and
years. And what that allows you to do, is take your light meter and plug in a cable,
it's called the sync cable.
And that goes to your flash and so when you push the meter
reading button on the side of your meter, your flash will fire. So this is on, again,
all light meters. It's been around for years and years and years. Now, recently companies have come out, most
notably PocketWizard, that allow you to replace that cable with a radio trigger.
And so this
is the mode that we have here. It's called wireless flash radio triggering mode. And
that little radio antenna there, sometimes it looks like a "T", because it's not as big
as our big screen here, but it's actually an antenna. What that allows you to do is,
when you take a meter reading, it triggers your flashes wirelessly.
OK, now that know about the modes, we're going
to show you two of these modes, basic ambient metering and wireless radio triggering. We're
going to show you the basics of both of those modes. So we're going to start with ambient
reading. So let's get going.
All right, so let's first talk about how to
meter ambient light. Erica here is our model. And what we're doing is, I've set my Sekonic
meter here to ambient mode, which is the first little mode right here on the dial. And we
can do here is in ambient mode, we can choose to either shoot in aperture priority or shutter
priority, meaning that I'll tell the meter I know what aperture I want to shoot at, you
tell me what shutter speed to put my camera on, or I can say I know what shutter speed
to shoot at and you tell me what aperture value to set my camera to.
So we're going to start out with our meter
set to aperture priority mode. And so, what I've done is I've set two variables. I've
set my ISO value at 100, which is what my camera's set to, and I've set my aperture
value to 2.8, That's the aperture I want to shoot at. What I don't know is what shutter
speed to use.
So it's very simple. Once I have those two things set, on the side
of the meter here there is a meter button and I can push that. So I'm going to just
put this right under Erica's chin. I'm going to point this right at my camera and then
when I push this, it tells me my shutter speed.
So my shutter speed is 400. So now, I can
just walk back to my camera, set my aperture to 2.8, My shutter to 400 and I can shoot
that and it would be a perfect exposure. Now, let's pretend like I had a certain shutter
speed I want to use. So I'm going to pull a number out of the air, I'm going to say
I want to shoot at a 125th of a second.
Well, I'm going to put this in a different mode.
I'm going to push my mode button, you know, roll it to the left. And now I I've got a
little square around the "T", which is the time value. So I'm going to tell it, I want
to set my shutter speed to 125. I'm doing that by just rolling this and as I roll that
it changes the shutter speed.
So 125, and I need to know what aperture value to use. But I don't actually have to re-meter. It
will just tell me, it knows what my last meter reading is, but we'll verify it. So I'll do
this and I'll click.
And again it just says five, and so now I know that if I put my camera
on 125, I need to set my aperture value to five, and then, I'll get a perfect exposure.
Now, what if I wanted to know what would happen, let's say, if I needed to shoot at ISO 200
or 400? Well I don't even have to re-meter. I can just push this ISO button and I can
roll my dial and let's say I'm going up to ISO 400. It says I need to go to F10. I go
down to 200 it'll tell me, oh, I need to shoot at 7.1.
So the nice thing about a meter is that you
can just meter once then change all the different parameters to see what different exposures
are going to do, so you can make the creatively-correct decision. So I'm going to put my ISO back
down to 100, and I'm going to set my camera to 125 and an aperture value of 5. So let
me go over and do this. Now, I have my camera set to manual mode,
and that's what you want to do when you're using a light meter like this, because you're
not using the built-in meter anymore.
So I've set my camera to manual mode. So I'm going
to set my shutter speed to 125 and my aperture value to 5, and I have my ISO at 100, so everything
matches what my meter was. So, Erica, look right at me. Perfect.
[Camera shutter sound effect] Mark: And I can look on the back here; it's
a perfect exposure. And that's how simple it is to use a light meter on location when
you're metering ambient light. Now we're going to go into the studio and look at how to meter
light in a studio lighting situation. [Transition sound effect] Mark: All right, now that we're in the studio,
let's talk about a couple of different modes that our meter can do.
Again, here we're with
Erica, and what we're going to show you first is there's a mode that allows you to hook
up a sync cable to your meter. Almost every single light meter has that, but we're going
to use a PocketWizard that's built into this, so we don't really need this here. So I'm
going to throw that away. So I'm going to change my mode, and I've got
a mode here that has a little antenna on that, and what that means is I'm going to trigger
my flash wirelessly.
So when I push my metering mode... [Flash fires] Mark: ...My flash fires. And so that's the
way I recommend you set up your meter, is use a Sekonic with a built-in PocketWizard.
That way you don't have to have that nasty sync cable built in. OK.
So, what we do here is: again, we're going
to set two parameters and let the meter solve for the third. But when you're shooting in
a studio, really you have to set two specific parameters; that is the ISO setting and the
shutter speed, and your shutter speed should be set to your camera's sync speed. Now, I've done three or four videos in the
past on sync speed, so we're not going to cover that here, but you can go back into
our Digital Photography One on One videos and see a bunch of videos on sync speed. So
take a look at those.
But, on the camera that I'm shooting with,
the sync speed is two hundredth of a second, so I've set my meter to two hundredth of a
second, and I've set my ISO to 100. And so, again, my ISO is set to 100. Some cameras,
like some of the Nikons, can only go to ISO. 200 As their lowest ISO setting, so if I was
shooting with a Nikon like a D90 or something, I'd set this to ISO 200.
But the point is you want to keep your ISO
as low as possible in the studio so you don't have a lot of noise. So, I'm setting mine
to ISO 100. My camera's sync speed is 200. And then the other thing that I'm going to
get is the aperture value, and really, when you're in a studio, that's really all you're
looking for, is the aperture value.
So a lot of times when you have an assistant
or somebody metering, they're just calling out a number, like seven, or six-five, or
five-four, four-five, something like that. And they're not saying anything else, just
this, like, "Oh, it's metering at four-five" because all you really care about is the aperture
value. So, what I'm going to do here is, this little
lumisphere thing, make sure that it's up when you're metering in the studio, getting general
lighting. Now, there are some reasons why you would have to have this down, and so,
in a few weeks we're going to have some advanced metering techniques, and so we'll talk about
when you need to have this down.
For basics, though, you want to have this up, and you
want to put this as close as possible to your subject. Now, ideally, you want to have your lumisphere
as close to the eyes of a model as possible if you're shooting portraits. Now, I don't
do that because I don't want to jab somebody in the eye. And so, it's really uncomfortable
sticking this in front of somebody's face, so what I do instead is I'll put it right
underneath a person's chin, and that makes sure that this is in line with her eyes so
I'm getting about the exact same distance from the light by putting it under the chin,
and it's a little less intimidating than, "Ah, I'm going to stick you in the eye." OK, so that's why I stick it there.
And then,
the lumisphere needs to point right down the lens of the camera's lens, so right down the
barrel of the lens, I guess. So point this right at your camera. Push the meter button. [Flash fires] Mark: The flash fires, and then I'm looking
here; this says f/11.
That's my aperture value, and I would set my camera to this value, f/11,
take a shot, and I'll have a perfect exposure. So it's very, very simple. Let me go over
it one more time. Set your ISO and your shutter speed exactly the same as your camera, then
meter under the chin, right at the camera, and once you do that, it's going to tell you
what the aperture value is.
Set your camera to that aperture value, and you'll have a
perfect exposure. Now, there's one other thing I need to cover
really, really quickly to make sure that your meter and your camera are set correctly, and
that is: out of the box, a lot of meters move in half-stop increments, and most cameras
move in third-stop increments. So, on a Sekonic meter, you can adjust your meter to either
move in half, full, or third-stop increments, so I suggest you make sure your meter is set
to third-stop increments. And there are different ways to do that, so make sure you check your
user manual, because on different meters there are different ways to do that.
On this one there's some switches on the back,
and if you have this meter, the best way to do it is: the first two switches down, and
then the last two switches up, and that'll get you in the right settings. For other meters,
make sure you check your user manual. OK, now what we're going to do is I'm going
to take a couple of pictures, and just show you what this looks like here at 200, f/11,
ISO 100. So Erica, are you ready? Erica: Mm-hmm.
Mark: Awesome. OK, we're going to take a couple
pictures and show you how that looks. [Musical interlude] Mark: Awesome. Well, those pictures look really
good, and those are the basics of metering.
So please stay tuned for part four of our
series, where we talk about some advanced light-metering tricks with this, the Sekonic
L-758DR. We're going to be talking about how to get light ratios to look right, and dynamic
range, and all kinds of stuff like that. So please stay tuned, and to make sure you don't
miss a single second of our videos, please subscribe. And as usual, if you have questions about
photography or photography-related gear, you can send those to me at askmark@adorama.Com.
Thanks for joining me.
I'll see you next week. [Outro music begins] Woman 1: This episode is brought to you by
Adorama TV. Visit the Adorama Learning Center, where you'll find photography tips and techniques,
links to the gear used in this episode, and related videos. For all the latest photography,
video, and computer gear, visit Adorama.Com.
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