> > > The thread about exposure differences for film and digital set me > > browsing the Sekonic site, where they now offer specifically digital > > light meters <http://www.sekonic.com/Products/All/Overview.aspx>. > > > > Mine are both relics of the film days, including a L-308s and > whatever > > was the equivalent back then of the L-758 meters. > > > > I get a lot of use out of the L-308s and noting that they now do the > > L-308DC I wonder if it's worthwhile to get one. The main difference > > that interests me is calibration. > > > > Is anyone else here using a calibrated meter / camera combo? If so, > > how much difference does it make, and is it easy to use or just > > another damn thing getting in the way? > > One thing that I don't understand is how a handheld light meter would > work significantly better with digital than taking a photo and looking > at the histogram.
you get an incident light reading rather than a reflected reading, and you take the reading before you start shooting. You then stick with the settings that your meter gives you, so you're not spending your time checking the histogram instead of shooting. > Or, for that matter, if it's an important shot, why > not just bracket. You can't bracket a once-in-a-lifetime shot. If your subject is moving and your timing is critical bracketing is not a viable option. > Drop $100 on a light meter, and that will buy you a > terabyte of storage. I don't want a terabyte of storage. I want to be able to take a reliable light reading matched to my cameras which will capture the optimum amount of information when I open the shutter and reduce the amount of time I spend checking the back and in post-production. > Plus, if you bracket in digital, you always have > the option of combining the frames in post production. The time spent in post-production can be better wasted on other things. If your exposure is out then you lose a lot of image quality too, so the post production is just about trying to improve something that you could have got right when you were shooting. It shouldn't just be about rescuing things. > > I could almost see some justification for using a hand held meter if > you are shooting JPEG, only have a 1GB card, and you camera doesn't > have the ability to display histograms or delete test shots. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
