Industry Standard Light Metering Using Sekonic L-358 Flash Master
Click For Larger Image
I’ve been meaning to buy a decent lightmeter since going strobist. I want to remove the guesswork in finding the correct exposure in my portrait shots (programming the settings on the camera and flash to sync well is tricky, being new to this part of photography and knowing squat about it). Searching on the internet, the use of lightmeter among other strobists is a mix of yes and no answers - others recommend its use while others are not so supportive about it. It took me three weeks of thinking and evaluating before I finally decided getting one. My clincher? I see myself upgrading from strobist to having a full continuous light setup in the future, where having a lightmeter is essential (if I remember correctly). And even if I don’t, results (pictures) above suggests that going manual mode and using a lightmeter to provide you with settings to input in your camera will give you better results.
Some Notes:
1: Sekonic L-358, the strap, leather pouch, CR123A battery (inside). You also get two attachments to the lightmeter - the lumisphere (round and white ball you see on top of the unit), and the lumigrid (for measuring reflected light, a.k.a. metering light on places where you can’t reach or go like landscapes, buildings, neon lights on signboards, etc.)
2 to 3: Used the lumisphere here. First pic using the lightmeter, second using the on-camera lightmeter.
3 to 4: Used the lumigrid here (order of metering is the same with images 2 to 3).
All test shots are taken on the same time (seconds in between), and on the same place. No post-processing whatsoever, just cropped and saved the pictures. These are my test on ambient light measurement. Will be testing the flash metering soon.
