Ken wrote:
>online at the LunaStar F2, which has a seperate spot-metering head
>available - is this an excessive compromise? I'm trying to cover the
>fact that my interests cover nature (birds) , aerial, portrait and
>close-up shooting.
If birding is one of your hobbies, a more precise in-camera spot meter will do you
more good than an external spot meter. You do not want to be fiddling around with
extra bits of equipment: 1) it makes noise, 2) the bird that is there right now will
not be there in the 5 seconds it takes to lower your spot meter and pick up your
camera.
For birding, I recommend at least an EOS 5 (EOS A2 in the USA) body because it has a
true spot meter built-in, and the price is still economical.
>I would say that my understanding of how a spot meter works is pretty
>rudimentary, so an explanation would not be out of line. I
>understanhd it does no averaging, and only measures a very small area,
>but that's about it. And I could be wrong there!
Whatever object (or part of an object) you point the spot meter at to get your
reading, the meter will give you the exposure that will make that object (or part of)
a middle grey on film (the same tone as your grey card). This is true whether you are
photographing a blackbird or a white snow-capped mountain.
Here's a rough guide (the grass may be greener where you live)
Object Adjustment
------- -----------
white doves +2 stops (ie, if spotmeter says F16@1/60, use F8@1/60)
dirty doves +1.5 stops
light skin and
green grass +1.0 stops
dark skin use as is
dark dark skin -0.5 stops
black skin -1.0 stops
black raven -1.5 stops
In essence, if you think the object should be lighter than middle grey, give it more
exposure (up to 2 stops brighter than the meter reading for a white wedding dress).
And if you think the object you're metering should be darker than middle grey, give it
less exposure (up to 2 stops less for a black funeral gown).
Spot vs. Partial.
What you get with the more expensive, narrower spots is less interference. By this I
mean that a 2% spot meter looking through a 300mm lens may read just the light
feathers of a bird, but the 10% partial spot will include the darker tree branches,
the ground, and whatever else is in the background. This makes your job of adjusting
more difficult because your thought process goes from:
"White feathers = 2 stops"
to:
"About 1/4th of the exposure area is full of white feathers that are normally +2
stops, but the remaining 3/4s of the area is full of black oak branches that are
normally -1 stops. Averaging everything out in my head, I should adjust by -0.5."
I hope this helps.
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