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Light Metering

Lesson 15 from: FAST CLASS: Understanding Light

Mark Wallace

Light Metering

Lesson 15 from: FAST CLASS: Understanding Light

Mark Wallace

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Lesson Info

15. Light Metering

Lesson Info

Light Metering

There are two basic methods of metering. Light incident metering and reflective metering. Your cameras, built in light meter, uses reflective meeting. Here's how it works. Light travels from its source and reflects off the subject and into your camera's lens. When the light enters your camera, it travels down the lens and then hits a mirror. The light is then reflected at a 90 degree angle up into the Penta prism and finally out the eyepiece, the mirror and pinned a prism. Allow us to see exactly what's coming through the lens. Your cameras. Light meter is inside the Pinter Prism. This built in light meter is what your camera uses to show you meter readings in the viewfinder. Some of the light is allowed to travel through the main mirror and hit a secondary mirror. This smaller mirror reflects the light onto the autofocus sensor. This sensor is what your camera uses to focus the lens When you press your shutter release button. Both of these mirrors move out of the way. The shutter open...

s and the exposure is made. When you're using flash heads that are sink to your camera, they don't fire until the shutter is completely open, which means that your built in light meter has no way of seeing and meet oring this light. For studio work, you'll need an incident light meter instead of metering light that reflects off the subject incident. Meters measured the light that is actually falling on the subject itself. You simply place the meter next to your subject and take a reading in a normal studio set up. You'll set your camera and light meter to the same shutter speed and I eso setting when you take a meter. Reading the light meter will tell you the correct aperture value, and you'll set your camera accordingly. Once you're all set up, you'll only have to worry about the aperture value. This is the light meter that I showed you previously. The thing that this has in it, this light meter it has this little pocket wizard transmitter built in. And so when I'm pushing the measure button, this is actually sending a signal to the pocket wizard that's on my flash, and it's making that flash fire. So that's how I'm controlling this with a pocket wizard. I am that Flash also has a pro photo air system And that's what I have on the cameras or using two totally different triggering system simultaneously and also walking through that. So for those of you who don't get confused or using both of them at the same time, Okay, so what I've done here and I think we have that where you can see that Cool. Cool. All right, so at the top here we have different modes. When I push the mode button and roll this jog wheel, we're going through these these different modes. So this is for ambient light. This guy right here is for studio strobes, and it's called allows you to push this metering button and it waits for a flash to fire, and then it gives you a reading. We don't need that because we actually have a radio. The next mode is if you have a cable to connect your light meter, too. Your flash. That's how it used to be done. You would actually have a physical cable that would tangle you up and make you fall over, so we're not going to use that cable. The other mode that's next to that. I push mode and go one more this is the radio triggering mode where I can remotely trigger a studio flash. So right now it's saying What channel are beyond? I'm on Channel One, and so that works. I can change that. You knew of the pocket was your channels. And then I can push the mode again and go to the next thing. And that's telling me I'm ready to go. So what we need to do here because we have sink speed issues to work through? I always set my shutter speed here to my camera sync speed. I just want to show you how to meet her for studio light. It's the simplest thing ever. So let's pretend this light is in the correct position, right? We've done all the stuff that we need to do. I will come over here and I'm going to point with my Loomis Fear. What do we call yesterday? The dazzle? Think so. Bloomers, Fear up. The dazzle must be up. I still think that that could be the coolest techno song ever. That dazzle must be up in every cool, So yeah, but the, uh I know it's late in the day. Um, we have a Loomis fear up, and I'm going to point this to wear my camera. Is that ski pointed toward the camera is for basic metering. So I'm gonna put it under the chin. I'll take a reading and this tells me 5.6. So now I have a choice. I can go over to my camera and just set it at 5.6 and take the picture will be exposed properly, but is 5.6 aperture that it should be? How do we know? Well, when I'm setting up Ah, portrait or some kind of a scene where I'm trying to light it, I'm going to determine what the aperture value should be before I meet her. The light based on the depth of field that I want in that photo. And so we talked about yesterday when I meet her for a portrait, I've done a bunch of tests with my lenses, and I know that from nose to back of a person said about this much at about 102 100 millimeters with my lens, I need to be in the range of F nine F 11. That's where I need to be on. And so for this 5.6 doesn't work for me because I want my depth of field to be about that that wide. And so what I would need to do then is adjust the power output on my flash. So I want this to meet her at F. Let's say F 10 and so f 5.6 means I need more light. More light for my flash means that I'm going to get ah, higher number, right, cause there's more light coming in what I'll do. And I'm gonna do this, John. So I can show people. How did it we'll have you hold that on the back of the flash here on the back of the flash. There are some controls, and this is consistent. We have that acute to pack. We can show this is consistent across different studio lighting control. So this is a different kind of studio lighting system. This is an acute pack, and this is something that you'll see not just the pro photo with many, many brands. That is a mono light, meaning everything is self contained in one unit is plugged into the wall. Everything's in there. This is a pack where you plug lights into it and you control those lights from the pack. So the thing is, with almost anyone with all studio strobes and with speed lights, there's always gonna be some control on there that says, Make the flash brighter or not as bright. It's like a volume knob on your radio, more light, less light. So that's all I'm going to do on this light overhears. I'm going to say we want more light. That's all I'm doing and that's consistent across all studios, troops. So what we do here on this guy right here? The center little knob here allows me to change and put this at a higher number, and that's saying MAWR light and this number means something. So if I go from 7 to 8, that's one stop mawr light from 8 to 9. That's one stop more light 9 to 10 stop more light. So this has, um, I believe, nine stops of control, from brightest to darkest. That's a really wide range of control, and the other thing this has is I can move this in 10th stop increments, so it's highly accurate. The other pact that I showed you This is a digital pack, so I can control it in 10 stop increments, meaning I could be extremely precise. With the digital pack. You don't have 10 stop increments. I think it's seven or something like that, so this is not as precise as this.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Understanding Light Day 1 Presentation
Understanding Light Day 2 Presentation
Understanding Light Day 3 Presentation
Gear List
Zone Lighting Basic Setup

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