Why meterless cameras are important to photography

[oldwino]

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As stated above, light “generally” doesn’t change too rapidly, so I generally try to get a bright Sun meter reading, and a deep shade meter reading, and work within those two measurements.  This works great for all my Leicas from the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Also works great for all my medium format folders from the 30s, 40s and 50s. 
 

But what is sometimes really great to use is my Nikon FM3, which has a great meter in it and takes away that little bit of work from me. Or when I use my Nikon F4, it even does more for me - in addition to a great meter, it even focuses for me (single point, so I still have to aim it at the thing I want in focus) AND winds the film on to the next frame. Amazing! I honestly don’t feel any stupider when I use these “fancy” cameras, and I can concentrate on other things just a little more. 

[rich_]

Using a camera without a meter is a handy skill and definitely one of the component parts in elevating one’s photography talents! Not so much related to cameras having meters but understanding the light and how it effects the exposure is very helpful!

Edited June 29, 2023 by rich_

[f8low]

Very interesting to read about so many personal experiences with using meter-less cameras, some stretching over decades!

When I go through @kivis initial post carefully, I read the point being made as "Why meterless cameras can be a pleasurable experience". 

I am shooting my M2 now for 12 years and agree with you guys, it's definitely a feasible and pleasurable route. Yet if one tries to make the point that meterless shooting elevates the photograph being made, I am not so sure... I need to think of very specific types of photography for this to be true.

Also, I agree with @250swb that the best way to learning to judge light is to measure light - not to take pictures. At least for me the analog feedback loop was always a bit slow. I would say the most efficient way is to carry an incident light meter at all times in the pocket and to occasionally judge & check how a certain scene is illuminated. This also frees you from understanding (correcting) the pitfalls of built-in reflective meters... 

[hepcat]

42 minutes ago, rho said:

 This also frees you from understanding (correcting) the pitfalls of built-in reflective meters... 

You have succinctly summarized what automation has done "to" people who own cameras.   I draw a distinction between "snapshot shooters" and "photographers."   "Photographers" understand the physics of light, the concepts of how meters work and therefore how to use them properly, and the properties of their film (or sensor) and use them all to their benefit in creating a photograph.  A "snapshooter" lets the equipment make those decisions, and largely has no opinion nor any real understanding of any of the technical decisions that "photographers" make on every image.    And yet, many call themselves and think of themselves as "photographers" while understanding little or nothing of the medium in which they profess to work.

As the equipment has gotten more automated and sophisticated, it has "freed 'snapshot shooters' from understanding the physics, mathematics, and chemistry of photography."  
 

[Bobonli]

I'm new-ish to the forum. Had an account +/- 12 years ago. I just re-entered the ecosystem with an M4-P. All of my past experience has been with metered cameras, starting back in '83 with a Nikon FM. It's been an experience re-learning Sunny 16 and using a handheld meter to confirm/refute my intuition as it pertains to exposure readings. My conclusion is that I spent years not really understanding exposure because I relied on a meter (I knew enough that it was going to render everything 18% grey and how to compensate), and didn't take the time to actually evaluate the light. I've had the camera for a week. My initial "guesses" as to exposure were off by at least 2 stops. I'm better now and will keep  at it. 

Exposure is now "external" to the camera. Either I use a handheld meter, or I make my own evaluation. Once I do that for a given time/place/situation, I can use my remaining brain cells to find something interesting and focus on focusing and defining DOF etc. Although it take a moment or two at the front of the process, it frees up cognitive processing down the line. 

[f8low]

15 hours ago, hepcat said:

You have succinctly summarized what automation has done "to" people who own cameras."  
 

Did I do that?  That was not my intention... 😌

I just wanted to spin the though of using a light meter as a 'learning device' further... If I did that (and I sometimes do) then I'd personally go for incident metering. If I can judge how the light sources illuminate my scene, I do not need to know how far off 18% the key objects in my scene are. The first I find attractive and key to photography, the latter is kinda specific to how today's (maybe not tomorrow's) reflective light metering works... Understand light, not light metering 😉

Edited July 1, 2023 by rho

[hepcat]

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6 hours ago, rho said:

Did I do that?  That was not my intention... 😌

I just wanted to spin the though of using a light meter as a 'learning device' further... If I did that (and I sometimes do) then I'd personally go for incident metering. If I can judge how the light sources illuminate my scene, I do not need to know how far off 18% the key objects in my scene are. The first I find attractive and key to photography, the latter is kinda specific to how today's (maybe not tomorrow's) reflective light metering works... Understand light, not light metering 😉

For me at least, your statement did do that, and brilliantly.

I find this statement interesting:   "If I can judge how the light sources illuminate my scene, I do not need to know how far off 18% the key objects in my scene are."

There are three things you need to be concerned with in calculating exposure:  The first is what YOU want to be rendered as 18% (middle gray) in the scene, and you take your meter readings for that light intensity (since that's what the meter indicates is the exposure that gives a specific light value a middle gray tonality.)  Once you've determined that, then figuring out whether the shadows are going to block up or the highlights are going to be blown... either, neither, or both...   and once again, that is YOUR decision, not the meter's.   Adjusting your exposure to move that middle gray tone (or leave it where you want it) to address the shadows and highlights then becomes pretty easy.   And you're absolutely correct in that understanding the light you see and how YOU want to record it is exactly what photography is about.  

There are a number of general guides for exposure,  for example:  for negative film, expose for the shadows; for transparency film, expose for the highlights.  Keeping those in mind can help you determine what value should be assigned middle gray (Zone V) and where Zone I and Zone X should lie in the scene.

[John Robinson]

4 hours ago, hepcat said:

There are a number of general guides for exposure,  for example:  for negative film, expose for the shadows; for transparency film, expose for the highlights.  Keeping those in mind can help you determine what value should be assigned middle gray (Zone V) and where Zone I and Zone X should lie in the scene.

Gives rise to two thoughts:  choice of film stock (assuming we are talking about shooting film, as variable-ISO has changed the parameters for digital) can make a big difference; having some basic understanding of the zone system and how it relates to the characteristics of the film can be very useful.  In my experience, there is an optimal exposure for most scenes and then variations that can still produce a good result but some film stock (especially transparency, or Ektar 100 or ProImage 100) can be quite unforgiving.  If you meter for zone V, do you know if zone IX or zone I will be within the range of the film?  If not (e.g. for transparency), do you meter for zone IX and then open up four stops?  Or for negative, do you meter for zone I then close down four stops?  Have you looked at the characteristic curve of the film and noted the "toe" and the "shoulder"?  In a difficult scene, you need to decide if you are dropping the shadows into the toe or the pushing the highlights onto the shoulder.

A good spot meter (either in the camera or hand-held) can be very useful.  Alternately, using a good incident light meter like the Sekonic that so many (film) cinematographers use can produce remarkably consistent results, provided you measure in the right place. 

"Sunny 16" (in England, "Sunny 11" is often a better choice) is excellent in good light and working with meterless cameras can be very satisfying but it is the difficult scenes where a good light meter can be an asset.

[Huss]

These two pics are from when the camera’s built in meter would have totally blown out the image.  So I used Sunny F16 and in both examples exposed at 1/125@f16.  Iso 100 film.

The thing is to look at the scene and determine what you want the exposure to be based on.  Even if it is a tiny part of the overall scene.

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[Warton]

Just because you don’t have a tool to meter doesn’t make your ability to meter superior.

Just because I have a tool to meter doesn’t make my ability to meter inferior.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

1 hour ago, Warton said:

Just because you don’t have a tool to meter doesn’t make your ability to meter superior.

Just because I have a tool to meter doesn’t make my ability to meter inferior.

 

It has nothing to do with superiority.

But at some point with meterless the metering tool becomes one less thing to carry on

[evikne]

I can deal with all kinds of light conditions without a meter, but I hate when clouds come and go and make the light change all the time! That's really annoying. 😠

Edited July 4, 2023 by evikne

[BigBabyEarl]

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Meterless metering training wheels. If you use the same asa film over time you can learn and see it in advance. I think not relying on your camera's meter will yield better exposed photos. The idea is to have fun and create, nothing to do with right or wrong. The less you're thinking when composing the better. 

[f8low]

@John Robinson @hepcat true, the Zone System is a good reminder that there’s more to look for than just that one 18% reading aka. Zone V.

This got me thinking how a meter-less photographer can combine Sunny 16 with lessons from the Zone System (ZS)? To me, the core message in the ZS is that you‘ve got to keep an eye (if you’re Ansel Adams) or a spot meter (if you’re me) at a whole palette of tones, not just 18%. Probably with a focus on the extremes.

 

Now Sunny 16 gives me my f-stop for Zone V but it doesn’t tell me where in the scene it is. So if I look at an object in some potentially delicate shadow/highlight, it’s not even clear where an object from zone V is that I could compare to. That is, to answer the question whether it still is within 4 stops of Zone 5?

 

[hepcat]

18 hours ago, rho said:

@John Robinson @hepcat true, the Zone System is a good reminder that there’s more to look for than just that one 18% reading aka. Zone V.

This got me thinking how a meter-less photographer can combine Sunny 16 with lessons from the Zone System (ZS)? To me, the core message in the ZS is that you‘ve got to keep an eye (if you’re Ansel Adams) or a spot meter (if you’re me) at a whole palette of tones, not just 18%. Probably with a focus on the extremes.

 

Now Sunny 16 gives me my f-stop for Zone V but it doesn’t tell me where in the scene it is. So if I look at an object in some potentially delicate shadow/highlight, it’s not even clear where an object from zone V is that I could compare to. That is, to answer the question whether it still is within 4 stops of Zone 5?

 

Exactly.  That is EXACTLY what understanding and using a light meter (and the Zone System) is about...  deciding which tone in a scene YOU want to be rendered as Zone V, and then understanding where the other tones in the scene will fall in the scale.  18% gray is absolute.  Assigning Zone V to a particular tonal value is YOUR job.

If Zone V is in fact assigned to a middle-gray tone in a "normal" scene, then you're giving the film the best chance of recording all of the range of tones in the scene,  hopefully without blowing the highlights or blocking up the shadows...  BUT... let's say there's something distracting in the Zone II shadows you want to hide, or the details of what you REALLY want to capture lie in Zone 8 or 9... with Zone V assigned to that middle gray tone in the scene.  THAT is when you shift your Zone V assignment up or down the scale to get the maximum detail in that area of luminance that would otherwise be recorded without detail if Zone V remained on a middle-gray tone in the scene.

Edited July 5, 2023 by hepcat

[johnwolf]

Seems to me it’s not about metered or meterless cameras but more about understanding how exposure works. If you only ever use metered cameras, but you take the time to understand middle gray and how metering works, you would be fast, consistent, and accurate, and would never have need for the meterless experience. Sure, meterless forces you to learn it, but one can easily do so regardless, even using AE cameras.

John
 

[hansvons]

18 hours ago, johnwolf said:

Seems to me it’s not about metered or meterless cameras but more about understanding how exposure works.

This. 

As a side note, I want to point out that the zone system is a stranger to cinematography. The metering of the incoming light with an incident light meter is the usual way in cinematography. You just step into the scenery and measure the illuminating light. For a base, best practice is measuring the key light and setting EI about half a stop lower than the box speed.

How one interprets the readings is another question. Shooting against strong backlight without any proper key light other than eye light will trigger a different decision than the same reading under an overcast sky.  Often measuring the reflected light leads to the "right" decision in such cases. That’s why modern cameras with their weighted integral light meters are so successful, and that's why I prefer for quick light metering my iPhone over my old and trusty Seconic Egg.

[f8low]

3 hours ago, hansvons said:

As a side note, I want to point out that the zone system is a stranger to cinematography. The metering of the incoming light with an incident light meter is the usual way in cinematography. You just step into the scenery and measure the illuminating light. For a base, best practice is measuring the key light and setting EI about half a stop lower than the box speed.

 

That’s a super interesting side note. I didn’t know this is how cinematographers roll.

In this discussion here, we started with the proposition that ‚internalizing/learning’ Sunny 16 is a pleasurable, probably liberating experience. IMHO this turns us into a rule-based incident light meter. With the Zone System, we‘re back to thinking about reflective metering.

Personally, I value working with Sunny 15 for a certain peace of mind, similar to zone focusing. You invest a bit of thought into pre-visualizing what you want to photograph, set exposure (distance) accordingly and focus on the ‚rest‘, for example composition.

Both techniques, Sunny 16 and zone focusing, aren’t always (easily) applicable. But in certain situation they set free creativity by focusing on the essentials.

 

 

 

Edited July 6, 2023 by rho

[hepcat]

1 hour ago, rho said:

In this discussion here, we started with the proposition that ‚internalizing/learning’ Sunny 16 is a pleasurable, probably liberating experience. IMHO this turns us into a rule-based incident light meter. With the Zone System, we‘re back to thinking about reflective metering.

Personally, I value working with Sunny 15 for a certain peace of mind, similar to zone focusing. You invest a bit of thought into pre-visualizing what you want to photograph, set exposure (distance) accordingly and focus on the ‚rest‘, for example composition.

All of the ways of metering (or NOT metering and using a best guess) are valid ways of measuring light values for photographic exposure.  They are not mutually exclusive.  There's a continuum from spot metering precise areas and calculating exposure based on the Zone System, to incident metering (averaging,) to best guess using Sunny 16 or some other rule-of-thumb.   Each has its place given the location and circumstances.   But the bottom line remains that you'll have more consistent and better exposed images as a body of work if you understand the principles of exposure using the Zone System, even if you're just quickly "guessing" using some variant of Sunny 16.  An educated and informed assessment of the light values (SWAG) is always better than a mere lucky guess.

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