More On Light Meters

When shooting film here’s another good reason to buy an external light meter. In your 50-year-old film camera the built-in light meter is likely not working anymore or if it is the meter itself may no longer be delivering a precise, accurate and predictable meter reading.

Built-in light meters just aren’t reliable enough after all those years. Also there can be issues with finding the correct battery to deliver the correct voltage to get the correct meter reading.

When you’re shooting black and white film you’ll find it’s pretty forgiving if you don’t nail the exposure. Colour negative film requires more accurate metering and silde film requires metering that’s spot on.

Speaking of spot on you can still buy spot light meters. All the rage back in the day a spot light meter allow the photographer to take extremely precise meter readings from several areas in the scene and then calculate the correct exposure based on the desired result. It was especially useful if the photographer was using Ansel Adam’s Zone System.

For today’s photography I like using an incident light meter which is used by walking into the scene to be photographed and pointing the exposure dome back towards the camera.

By doing so the light meter only measures the light falling on the dome and ignores the light being reflected by the scene.

External light meters aren’t cheap but it’s better than using a broken or inaccurate light meter or no meter at all (the sunny 16 rule).