AboutBill Edwards Expertise Professional Digital Still Photography and Film Questions on Lighting, Equipment, Portraits, and Limited Commercial Still Photography.
Experience 30 years as a professional photographer / business owner
Organizations Professional Photographers of America
Guild of Professional Photographers of Delaware Valley - Past President and Chairman of the Board
Publications Have taught photography at all levels Including Lectures at Professional Photographers of America's National Convention; International Professional Photography Guild's National Convention; State and Local Associations
Education/Credentials Numerous classes and seminars - no degree.
Awards and Honors International Photography Hall of Fame Exhibit Winning Entry
Image Published in Fuji Film's Showcase Publication
Best of Show Portrait of a Child - GPPDV
Best of Show Portrait of a Group - GPPDV
Voted best in Bucks / Montgomery County several times
Past/Present Clients Clients are mostly individual Families local to Bucks and Montgomery Counties in Pennsylvania with several regional clients from Connecticut to Florida. Our studio has raised over $150,000 for local schools and other charities.
Expert: Bill Edwards Date: 7/6/2008 Subject: Quick Question
Question Hello,
I am trying to learn photography in general. Being the "Digital" age I was wondering if digital photograpers still use the old hand held light meters, like the ones thay used with the older 35mm cameras. Any help would be appreciated. -Regards-Mr. Stroud
Answer Mr. Stroud,
I believe that there are still a few pros using a light meter - But not many. First of all most of us can eye an exposure pretty well - if there is time we'll take a guess - shoot a frame and see what it looks like at first then look at the histogram for the test image - adjust accordingly and start shooting. If this is a 'grab shot' where there is no time to hone the exposure we'll even resort to 'A'perature priority once in a while.
A light meter can't compare to a histogram on your camera that gives you a map of all pixels in the image and where they fall on the brightness scale. Some cameras even show this for each color (Red / Green / Blue) to give you an idea of how the color is weighted as well as the overall exposure.
Reading the histogram expertly will take some reading about and practice, practice, practice. In an average scene you would have a nice little 'mountain' centered towards the middle of the histogram with some pixels reaching the left edge (darker pixels) and some reaching the right edge (lighter pixels). Of course, almost no scene we shoot is 'average' so keep in mind a scene with a lot of dark area would have a histogram in which the 'mountain' is weighted towards the left and visa versa for a light scene.
One more thing about histograms - maybe the most important. You don't want your 'mountain of pixels' to be stacked against either edge this indicates gross over or under exposure.
I like to set my D3 so that the over exposed highlights blink in the preview image. Then as long as there is a bright object in the scene I can quickly adjust the exposure without even reading the histogram to a point where just a few of the brightest pixels are blinking. From there I count on the extended range of my equipment to bring those highlights back to proper exposure while knowing that the shadows received the most exposure they could for that situation.
BTW - I always shoot in RAW format which greatly extends the exposure range captured vs. JPEG.
