When exposing your scene, you have countless options \u2014 from simply eyeballing the visuals on your monitor to using your camera’s histogram or zebra stripes. But there is no denying that light<\/strong> meters<\/strong>\u00a0are far and away the most accurate \u2014 and specific \u2014 way to measure exposure.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, many in-camera exposure options will not always give you specific enough information to make exposure adjustments with. For instance, your histogram may show that you have a hot spot in your image<\/strong>, but you won\u2019t necessarily know where that hotspot is coming from. It essentially gives you an average readout from your sensor (which can be helpful and is certainly better than using nothing), but doesn\u2019t give you the full picture of what’s really going on in your shot.<\/p>\n A light<\/strong> meter,\u00a0<\/strong>on the other hand, can be used to gain exposure information on various points within your frame quickly and easily. While you can use a light<\/strong> meter<\/strong> in spot mode<\/strong> (which works in a similar way to your camera’s built-in light<\/strong> meter<\/strong>), many DPs like to shoot in incident mode<\/strong>. When shooting with an incident<\/strong> light<\/strong> meter<\/strong>, you can simply hold the meter in front of your talent\u2019s face and point it at camera<\/strong>.<\/p>\n It will effectively gather the amount of light hitting your talent and let you know what your exposure settings should be based on the amount of light. If you were to use a light<\/strong> meter<\/strong> in spot mode, you would point it at your subject from the camera POV, and it would be taking a reading based on the amount of reflected light from your subject.<\/p>\n Both incident and spot metering can be useful in different scenarios, but for the purpose of this post, we will focus on incident metering.<\/p>\n To properly meter your subjects using an incident<\/strong> meter<\/strong>, you’ll first want to input the exposure information that you already have. Assuming you are shooting at 24p, you can set your shutter speed on the meter to 1\/50 and your ISO level to whatever the native ISO of your camera is \u2014 let\u2019s say, 800.<\/p>\n When you take a reading of your subject, since you\u2019ve already locked in your shutter speed and ISO value, the meter will give you an f-stop reading that represents the aperture value you need to hit in order to achieve perfect exposure<\/strong>. If you\u2019re shooting on a bright day, the reading might be something high \u2014 like f16, which can be problematic if you want to shoot wide open and achieve shallow DOF.<\/p>\n In a situation like\u00a0this, you might choose to use your light<\/strong> meter<\/strong> in a different way. For example, you might choose to also lock in an f-stop value of f\/2.8 and let your meter tell you how many stops you will overexpose your talent when using those settings. If you’re five stops over, you can simply use ND filters to cut the five stops of light without having to adjust exposure settings in camera.<\/p>\n This is just one basic example of how a light<\/strong> meter<\/strong> can be used, but there really are countless uses for one on any set. Many DPs like to use meters to understand contrast ratios, or they’ll meter their lights directly in order to understand exactly how much light is being generated by each individual source.<\/p>\n Regardless of how you choose to use it, there’s no question that the light<\/strong> meter<\/strong> is a fundamental tool that can not be replaced with any of your in-camera exposure tools. You may not need to use one, but you will inevitably get better quality \u2014 and more consistent \u2014 results when you do.<\/p>\n The following video from stillmotion<\/a> explains some of the fundamentals of metering, and is a great watch for those interested in purchasing a light<\/strong> meter<\/strong>.<\/p>\n![\"Light](\"https:\/\/pbblogassets.s3.amazonaws.com\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Light-Meters1.jpg\" "\\"Light")
Image via Shutterstock<\/a><\/em><\/p>\nUsing Incident Metering<\/h3>\n
![\"StillMotion](\"https:\/\/pbblogassets.s3.amazonaws.com\/uploads\/2016\/03\/StilMotion.png\" "\\"StillMotion")
\n<\/a>Image via\u00a0stillmotion<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n