Metering

[peterjshearer]

I'm hoping you more experienced guys here can help. I have been photographying a few weddings lately and am pleased with the results. Using a canon 300D I find that the metering is'nt so good as I seem to have quite a lot of work to do in photoshop. My question is "do any of you more experienced guys use a hand held meter to get consistent results with digital ? " - I've done one wedding for a pro who swears by keeping things basis by setting his camera to 'P' mode for most shots - what is your common settings guys ?

 

[Big Mike]

Welcome to the forum.

I'm not a pro...but when I'm shooting at weddings I usually shoot in manual mode, when using a flash. I match the aperture to the setting on the flash unit and change my shutter speed to suit how much ambient exposure I want. That was with my older film camera.

There is nothing wrong with keeping the camera in 'P'...as long as you get good images. I would prefer to use one of the priority modes but that's just a preference.

What metering mode are you using? Are you using flash? I've heard that Canon's TTL-II flash metering can be inconsistent at times.

 

[Christie Photo]

When I was shooting film, I always used a hand-held meter. These days, I carry a grey card. I use it constantly... absolutely... always... for every available light shot.

I've used the same strobes for quite some time now... more than a dozen years. So for my flash shots, I pretty much know what the exposure is.