Please help with light meter questions

wgp1987 · Aug 20, 2010

Hello again, I have not been on in a long time and honestly .... i miss you guys!

Anyways! Here goes my questions for those who know. I recently discovered the light meter in my 5d is horrible and rarely accurate. I was wondering if someone could recommend what they would consider to be the best way to meter with the 5d although im aware it varies depending on the subject. I find myself always putting on live view to see the exposure and correcting the exposure but this is a time consuming step when trying to capture certain moments.

So, i thought a great solution would be to have an external meter that most studio photogs use but im not sure how well these work with everyday random shooting in uncontrollable environments. If you agree with using an external meter then what would you recommend?

What do you think is the best possible solution?

tirediron · Aug 20, 2010

The best solution is to solve your in-camera metering issues. I don't speak Canon, but in general with any modern DSLR, as long as you're on matrix/wide-area metering and you're not trying to meter a black lab running in the snow at high noon, you should be fine. Can you show us some examples of 'bad metering'.

wgp1987 · Aug 20, 2010

tirediron said:
The best solution is to solve your in-camera metering issues. I don't speak Canon, but in general with any modern DSLR, as long as you're on matrix/wide-area metering and you're not trying to meter a black lab running in the snow at high noon, you should be fine. Can you show us some examples of 'bad metering'.

hmmmm ... not at this moment. I could go out and take some photos and repost. Anything i have saved as jpeg is edited so i dont have any improperly exposed photos.

Bitter Jeweler · Aug 21, 2010

The 5D's light meter works just fine.

Scatterbrained · Aug 21, 2010

Get a gray card, have someone hold it and set the camera to spot metering. Meter the card and shoot. You should be fine.
Try metering off of the sky when outside too, that tends to give you a good base. You just need to learn how your meter works and that will allow you to anticipate whether it will under or over expose and adjust accordingly.

Village Idiot · Aug 21, 2010

Spot meter. That way, it just meters of the middle focus point. Meter for what part of the scene you want and the recompose and shoot.

KmH · Aug 21, 2010

Bitter Jeweler said:
The 5D's light meter works just fine.

+1. It's possible but not likely there is a problem with your camera's meter.

It sounds more like a situation where you are just begining to learn how the in-camera light meter functions, and are hoping for something more point-and-shoot. The LCD in Live View mode is a very poor tool for evaluating exposure,

Most dSLR's offer 3 metering modes: Spot, Center-weighted, and what Canon calls Evaluative. All three modes are calibrated to an 18% gray standard.

From that calibration it's up to the photographer to make the appropriate exposure adjustments to get what they want. An example is, snow will look 18% gray unless the photographer adds a stop or so of exposure to make it render the white that it really is.

You do have 2 other alternatives:

use a hand held light meter.
get a camera that requires less skill to operate.

gsgary · Aug 21, 2010

Bitter Jeweler said:
The 5D's light meter works just fine.

+1 are you using the correct metering, an external meter works the same

Idahophoto · Aug 21, 2010

Sounds like your cameras meter is off, but be that as it may, I am rarely happy with in camera metering. They are way to easily fooled. I would strongly suggest a real meter like Sekonic L358. I use the higher end L-758DR and would not give it up for anything. No camera has come close to it in matching performance. The 758 has a bit more features than the 358, but still will do 90% of what you need and is just as accurate and of course a bit cheaper.

wgp1987 · Aug 21, 2010

Well if someone has a good read on metering then i can make sure what i am doing is correct.

Josh66 · Aug 21, 2010

wgp1987 said:
Well if someone has a good read on metering then i can make sure what i am doing is correct.

What are you doing, and in what way is it not working out?

What metering mode are you using, and what are you metering on?

Knowing where to meter is probably the most important part...

Bitter Jeweler · Aug 21, 2010

It's something YOU need to learn through experience.
Idahophoto, I highly doubt his meter is malfunctioning in any way.
It's user error.

Idahophoto · Aug 22, 2010

Bitter Jeweler said:
It's something YOU need to learn through experience.
Idahophoto, I highly doubt his meter is malfunctioning in any way.
It's user error.

Probably, but I'm not sure. For most basic scenes the in camera matrix mode should do a fair job as long as there is no problematic things in the scene. Keep it simple and compare it to another camera if you can. You can use a grey card to help out as other have suggested but there rather pricey and should not be needed. Then again if it help you get better exposures it well worth it.

clanthar · Aug 22, 2010

Hi,

This is a perennial problem and it is "of the nature of the beast." However there's a modern complication added by digital cameras.

The meter inside your 5d responds to light reflected back from the subject, and no matter how it's set: spot, average, matrix, evaluative or hocus pocus this will always be a limiting factor. The tacit assumption built into all reflected-light meters is: the subject is reflecting back an 18% average. Note this illustration:

I took the photo of the two cars using the camera's meter with the camera on P. With both cars in the scene, along with the street and grass, etc. I got a good exposure -- the car on the left was silver and the car on the right was charcoal. Then I moved in close and photographed the two door panels. The camera meter darkened the silver door panel and lightened the charcoal door panel.

An internal reflected-light meter built into the camera can never beat this problem. A hand meter can be used to read the light falling on the subject (incident meter) and as such does not respond in any way to the reflective properties of the subject. Assuming it's properly adjusted it's reading is always correct for a normal exposure that will place diffuse highlights just below burn out.

With practice most photographers learn to adapt to the "slop" that's a natural part of using a reflected-light meter since they're so much more convenient. Over time you should be able to anticipate when your subject will cause your camera's meter fits. For example when you photograph a light source; what percent of the light hitting a light source bounces back?! Your camera expects reflected light.

Now the digital camera complication: Unless you're shooting RAW the photo you get from your camera has been adjusted by the camera image processor. The camera image processor (DIGIC, EXPEED, BIONZ, etc.) is supposed to take the capture from the sensor and process it for tone response, color and detail. There's a catch here -- they don't work very well. Your camera meter may produce a perfectly good exposure and the image processor will trash it.

Took this photo last month:

This is the camera's (Canon 5d mII) image processed JPEG. It sucks. It's dingy and flat and off color -- looks underexposed. I had the camera on Av and evaluative metering. The RAW capture is fine. The scene is a classic front lit landscape and the camera meter nailed it. Then the image processor mangled it.

So, most of the previous responders think you're camera is probably working OK. They're probably right. There's no easy fix; no switch to throw or setting to change. Reading incident light is accurate, but it's a pain and otherwise the meter in your camera is fundamentally limited by how it works.

Joe