According to this article, you've got it about right. But there's no point to using the gray card there, just hold the meter near the part of the image that will be the brightest (or most sensitive to overexposure, like facial skin), with the dome pointing back at the camera lens (one general method) and fire your strobe(s). The meter is supposed to flip up and stick at the required f-stop. You can translate to different f-stops using the scale on the dial.
http://photo.net/photography-lighting-equipment-techniques-forum/009RaY Another way to use it is to measure the light from each individual strobe. To do that you'll need to make a tiny snoot from black paper that fits the white dome. (Think of it as a reverse flash.) Holding the meter near your subject, point the snoot at each light and fire it (or them all) to measure its contribution. On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 3:31 PM, Larry Colen <[email protected]> wrote: > > I did some art nudes with a friend last night using my studio flash gear. > As an experiment, I pulled out the flash meter and when I'd get my lighting > dialed in, I'd take a picture of the flash meter and a grey card. > As far as I can tell, the way it works is to fire the strobe. the f/stop > that it reads on the meter is the correct aperture for ASA 50 film. Point > the arrow on the dial at that aperture, then look at what aperture lines up > with the ISO, and that's the supposed correct exposure. > > I will say that it never completely blew the exposure, but it was pretty > consistently different from the exposure that I ended up using, about a stop > or so under. In other words plenty of safe headroom for something really > bright in the picture, but not maximizing the SNR on low key digital photos. > Shooting at ISO 80 on the K-5, I think that I could feel confident that if > I used the flash meter, and didn't check the histogram, I would almost never > blow a shot. > > I am coming to the conclusion that it is a valuable tool to know how to > use, that there are situations that it can prove invaluable, but likewise, > the histogram is also a valuable tool, and I'd be foolish to rely on the > flash meter and ignore the histogram, if the histogram were available. > > For those that would like to check for themselves, fluidr shows the exif > data, so you can see the flash meter reading, and my actual exposure data. > http://www.fluidr.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157629987116526/ > > -- > Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est > > > > > > -- > 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. -- -bmw -- 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.
