Exposure Meters

Within technology today, it seems like a light meter (also known as exposure meters) is not necessary as digital cameras comes with a built-in light meter. It is an essential tool providing you with exact lighting information so you can properly set your exposures. After doing some research on light meters, I think they are useful especially while shooting film photography in the studio because it's all completely manual controlled with the exposure and this essential tool will help you with what settings to use your film camera on. Hand-held light meters usually solves problems associated with the camera's meter and gives better control of your exposures.

Most of these hand-held light meters usually reads incident, reflective and flash lighting. These metering modes is very useful wherever you shoot! Incident is the light that falls on to your subject direct whereas reflective is the light that is reflected onto your subject. I think incident lighting is very common and it usually means that the light meter is recorded from where the subject is. The difference with reflective reading is that the light meter is recorded from where you're shooting from, so distanced from your subject.

Reflective | Incident

Ambient | Flash

Exposure Comparison

Ambient lighting is the term for natural lighting. Flash photography is when you use artificial lighting that exposes darker spots. For example, this image comparison shows you the difference between both ambient and flash. You can see how the ambient has strong contrast and shadows as the lighting in that location isn't so good. The image using flash is a better exposure, you can see more of the couple and even the colour of their outfits stands out. It also removed the harsh shadows because the flash was shot from a distance.

When you use a hand-held meter in ambient lighting, you can select the ISO you are using and what shutter speed the camera is set on. This enables the light meter to give you a reading based on the light conditions you are under and it will tell you which F stop you should be working at. To use flash with the light meter in the studio, you do the same steps and attach the cable on the meter, this enables the flash to set off and you'll get an accurate F/stop to shoot with.


Sources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM6E691HQ2E
http://www.exposureguide.com/light-meters.htm
http://www.sekonic.com/whatisyourspecialty/photographer/articles/how-to-use-a-handheld-meter.aspx