>
> ...by the way, it is a lovely shot Ken !
>
Thank you.
Actually, I use the incident light meter quite frequently. When doing flash
work, I nearly always use the meter, but when working in a mixed
digital+film environment where I'm shooting print film (Fuji NPS or NPH), I
set both the E-1 and the OM's to the same exposure with the incident light
meter.
Several years ago I sold the Gossen to George (conservative George from San
Fransisco) so he could do moonlit shots of Yosemite and had purchased a
Polaris flash/ambient digital meter.
The reason why I use the incident light meter for mixed format shooting is
that I totally lock in my midtones into lock-step. When photographing people
in color, the most critical thing is to make sure that the midtones land
exactly in the right spot. The dark/light areas of the image can blow out or
block up, but if you don't get the midtones right, the image is trash.
I take an incident reading in the subject's lighting, and dial this in to
the cameras. A test shot with the digital will usually reveal a nearly
perfect exposure with nice rich colors. Occasionally, I will have to bump
the exposure based on wierd lighting angles, but once locked in, the
resulting scans and digital camera files are essentially interchangeable
without jumping through corrective hoops. In fact, with the E-1, I can shoot
in-camera JPEGs that are a nearly perfect match to NPS and NPH. No whacky
one-by-one adjustment on each and every image that RAW conversion with ETTR
(expose to the right) demands. The E-1 is possibly the best "mid-tone"
digital camera made in that the sensor and in-camera algorithms better match
color print film than most. (The FF35mm Kodak 14n also was known for this
too).
Wintertime is a classic time to use incident light meters. Same with foggy
days. Anytime you can't find a reliable midtone to meter off of. The meter
goes with me nearly everywhere. Even with histograms, I find that I can
usually get a better exposure using the handheld than I can without. Maybe,
it's a little bit of gray-matter-time-allotment factor involved too.
AG
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