Light meters
With all the tech talk out there and everything that I’ve mentioned before there is still one important factor to determine what your final picture will look like. All cameras either digital or film use light metering to determine how the picture will come out. Metering is what controls the shutter speed and aperture of your camera based on the lighting conditions and ISO’s. Understanding how your cameras light metering works is very important. It’s the difference between just a picture and WOW What a shot!
In photography light metering is essential to determine your camera settings. Most professional photographers have a hand held light meter. A light meter helps with setting your f-stop and shutter speed. If you have manual control over your digital camera a hand held light meter is must tool to have.
Generally there are two types of light meters a reflected light meter which is the one built into your camera, there are also hand held ones, measuring the amount of light reflected by an object. With reflected light there limitations, these meters are preset to a certain standard. This could result in over or under exposure of the photo if the “scene� is not within the preset standard. A hand held reflective meter is a spot meter, its uses a very small pinpoint range, this way you can factor in the shadows, highlights, and the very bright areas.
The other is the incident light meter which measures the amount of light falling around an object. This type of meter is used when the measuring needs to be precise and consistent, such as landscape, outdoor model, and cinematography.
A better understanding of this can be found at wikipedia.org where they explain the diffenent light meters and how they are used and at cambridgeincolour.com Where there is a good explanation of how the light metering in your camera actually use the light spectrum.
