M8 manual metering for highlights.

[ChrisC]

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I've been manually metering for too many years to get on with automatic metering; I've tried with the M8 but always return to manual metering. So having trained my eyes to successfully fabricate a mid-tone for film exposures I carried the technique over to digital, but not without minor exposure accuracy problems which I never had with medium format Negatives or Transparencies [i regularly didn't 'bracket' transparency exposures].

 

In a thread I can't find concerned with metering, Jamie Roberts [i believe] suggested metering the brightest highlight so the red metering dot is showing plus the right hand arrow, and then dialling back four clicks [two stops] for an alternative way of getting a good exposure. I tried this for a while, and then decided I may as well set my meter to +1 2/3 exposure compensation for simple reading of brightest tones to give my exposure without having to dial back the shutter speed wheel.

 

In good light conditions this method works excellently for me, and in murkier light I know that I will likely need to tweak the shutter exposure by 1/2 a stop or more.

 

The above technique, with roots in over a hundred years of successful analogue photography, is still shifting the exposure relationship of mid-tones to highlights. It occurred to me that I'd enjoy a camera meter setting for true highlight metering which would give an exposure with a just printable highlight every time a brightest highlight was metered from. This would be an 'expose to the right meter' that really metered for optimum use of the recording levels and prevention of highlights 'blowing out'. Good for RAW/ Not so good for Jpegs - granted. This could be a user selectable mode.

 

What do you think? Should I up my medication?

 

........Chris

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[Shootist]

"Yes up the Meds" (if a little is good then a lot is better) and get yourself a good hand held meter, if you don't already have one, and skip the built in meter.

[ChrisC]

Thank you Ed. - So the total sum of the discussion so far is that I should take more drugs [i already have the wonderful Minolta Flashmeter and spot attachment, and there's no way I'm going back to using it for M8 exposures].

 

Is there something wrong with the idea that in many circumstances, for digital, it makes sense to be metering highlights rather than mid-tones which likely then need shifting to maximise the recording levels relative to the contrast of the scene?

 

For the record, my outdoor exposures are improved with the metering technique I described in post one, but if I knew that a brightest highlight was metering at around level 246 my technique would be faster, certain, and I doubt I would need a histogram.

 

Just a thought. Or the medication kicking in.

 

......................... Chris

[Shootist]

I use the built in meter but I have gotten use to not trusting it when there is a very bright area and a fairly or very dark area in the scene I'm shooting or if the subject is back lit and the subject only takes up a small area of the frame. At those times it is all guess work, at least for me it is, or trial and reshoot if possible.

I very rarely use manual mode as I have gotten use to pointing the camera at a area I THINK will give me the correct exposure then lock the exposure then focusing/composing the shot. Then other times I just Wing It and hope for the best.

 

Remember that the M8 meter can act like a spot meter with longer lenses and more of a area meter with wide angle lenses, depending on how wide or how long the lens is.

 

It's the MEDS kicking in.

[giordano]

Is there something wrong with the idea that in many circumstances, for digital, it makes sense to be metering highlights rather than mid-tones which likely then need shifting to maximise the recording levels relative to the contrast of the scene?

 

"Expose for the highlights" is an old and good rule for reversal film whether colour or monochrome and makes sense in many circumstances, but IMHO trying to use it with a built-in M meter is usually more trouble than it's worth.

 

The main reason is that the critical highlights - those that need to be as bright as possible without being burnt out - tend to be a very small proportion of the image and cannot be metered directly without either using a 1 degree spot meter or getting very close.

[andybarton]

"Expose for the highlights" is an old and good rule for reversal film whether colour or monochrome and makes sense in many circumstances, but IMHO trying to use it with a built-in M meter is usually more trouble than it's worth.

 

 

Using this method on an M7 is pretty damn good, I'd say.

[Guest bwcolor]

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Bracket.

[giordano]

Using this method on an M7 is pretty damn good, I'd say.

 

Presumably you're exposing for the highlights but metering off an average?

[lars_bergquist]

Chimp. The INFO button works fine.

 

The maximum highlight exposure (diffuse highlight of course, point highlights are normally allowed to burn out) is about 2 1/3 f-stops above an 18% midtone, just as with Kodachrome (sob). So the advice about the display arrows would have been right, except that the meter in the M8 is not a spot meter. You have to guess exactly where you are aiming it. You are unlikely to nab a small highlight right, and if there's a reflection highlight in or close to it, you're off. The trick works mostly in snow (in overcast lighting, add just 2 f-stops, not two-and-a-third).

 

Consequently my kit does always include a hand meter with incident light capacity. That little opal dome is your portable diffuse highlight. It is exact and dependable. A spot meter is slower, because you have to remember if you are metering a diffuse highlight or any other 'zone', and then compensate.

 

The old man from the Age of Selenium Meters

[ChrisC]

Bracket.

 

No thanks. I need a technique which nails the exposure consistently and accurately first time, that's the way I'm used to working. Ed's description of his metering technique rather echoes my early irritations with the M8's meter [though I used the Manual setting - but the process was essentially that of fabricating a mid tone]. Like Ed, I was frustrated with results with M8 metering, and I was using a technique gained over many years of accurate work.

 

Having changed to highlight metering has been a revelation for me. I am now much faster with the camera, and expect to nail the exposure first time with an optimally full histogram in my usual shooting conditions. I'm glad the thread didn't die immediately, but I'm surprised at the reluctance to take up my speculation of highlight metering whereby the brightest highlight can be recorded at a guaranteed printable recording level. The difference between this thinking and transparency technique is that we can shift the midpoint with digital, but on a lightbox, transparency mid tones have to look right [unless you were shooting transparency for in-house scanning].

 

When it finally dawned on me that many years of good technique wasn't working for me with the M8 [though it still works great with digital Nikon], I realised that changing technique to highlight metering just makes more sense to me for digital. Metering midtones with thoughts of protecting the highlights and then shifting the mid point with more, or less exposure to optimise the available recording levels now seems alien to me when nailing the highlight does all that, but more efficiently.

 

Taking a wild guess; I don't think the idea of a metering setting with a brightest highlight falling at level 248 will be coming soon.

 

It was just a thought.

 

.............. Chris

[tomasis7]

Chris C, I have similar experience. I use hand held meter though. When I found out that digital sensor is so sensitive for highlights so I started to meter sky and ground and decide which time/f I will use. Cut of about 2 stops from sky metering value (highlights) works often. Funny that I have to reverse the way of metering when I use films on camera. I meter the shadows instead when I dont worry about exposed highlights for films Digital sensors has amazing potential to recover some stops from underexposure.

[croweatr]

ChrisC,

 

What you need is to shoehorn the Olympus OM-4Ti's unequalled metering system into your M8.

 

I believe there's room inside the camera. If you take off the lens, if your camera is the same as mine, you'll notice there is a large unused space in between the rear of the lens and the shutter curtain.

 

I reckon it would fit in there...

 

Kevin

[lars_bergquist]

ChrisC,

What you need is to shoehorn the Olympus OM-4Ti's unequalled metering system into your M8.[ ... ]

That was about as far as you could take reflected-light metering. I have used that camera extensively. But incident metering does what no reflected meter can do. It bypasses completely the major source of exposure mistakes, the wildly varying reflectances of the subject. Instead, you meter THE LIGHT and know exactly where the maximum diffuse highlight lies. Then it does not matter what you point your camera at, a snowdrift or a steam locomotive. You will have maximally differentiated highlights, maximally differentiated shadows, and 18% midtones or 'Zone V' or whatever exactly where you want them.

 

I think Kodak still make their Gray Scale. Get one and make a series of alternative exposures. Frame 'A' is the maximum attainable diffuse highlight, about 98%. This is what the little white hemisphere gives you. Everything else follows by definition.

 

The old man from the Age of Selenium Meters

[ChrisC]

... shoehorn the Olympus OM-4Ti's unequalled metering system into your M8.......

 

Kevin - My early photography grew with the fabulous OM-1, the easiest camera I have ever used - and there have been many. After I stopped laughing at your idea, I realised that I won't take up your suggestion because if I were to cram anything into my M8 I'd rather it were a coffee maker. Damn, I bet the batteries wouldn't be powerful enough.

 

................... Chris

[ChrisC]

... incident metering....bypasses completely the major source of exposure mistakes...you meter THE LIGHT and know exactly where the maximum diffuse highlight lies.......

 

Lars - With respect; incident metering is no good if you're indoors and the brightest highlights are clouds seen through the window, or if you are in shade, for example. It has it's place of course, and advocates too; I was never one of them.

 

............... Chris

 

The aging man who worries about Selenium Toner poisoning.

[lars_bergquist]

Lars - With respect; incident metering is no good if you're indoors and the brightest highlights are clouds seen through the window, or if you are in shade, for example. It has it's place of course, and advocates too; I was never one of them.

 

............... Chris

 

The aging man who worries about Selenium Toner poisoning.

If you expect to get highlight detail both in the clouds outside and in the shadows inside, then you are expecting the impossible. In most cases not even negative film can handle a dynamic range that large. There are occasions when you have to sacrifice one or the other. In indoor pictures, except maybe in some California style glasshouse, you have to treat the windows as light sources just like electric bulbs.

 

In an outdoors sun-shade situation with the main subject in the shade, you measure the sun or estimate it, and overexpose the sunlit parties as much as you dare. There are no universal nostrums in photography, and I have not claimed that incident is one. I do only claim that it is the most dependable metering method in most practical cases.

 

The old man from the Age of No Meters

[croweatr]

Chris...

 

The OM-1 was indeed an amazing thing. The -4Ti was too. It had a highlight/shadow spot metering system if you wanted to meter correctly for highlights & shadows. Once mastered, and combined with its multi-spot metering, it was nigh impossible to incorrectly expose on an OM-4Ti.

 

That's what I'd like to see on an M9. Multi-spot metering. Just so I can relish the nostalgia. Perhaps they could call it an O-M9...!

 

I still lament the passing of my OMs - and the system in general. Being an OM user was not unlike being a Leica user. It's like being part of a cult.

 

As far as getting highlights right on the M8, I've learnt to try and do it by 'feel'. The LCD is useless in evaluating exposure, and even the clipped right-hand end of the histogram still contains information that can be recovered.

 

As for coffee, have you tried dipping the camera before heading out, then just licking it every now and then?

 

Kevin

[ChrisC]

If you expect to get highlight detail both in the clouds outside and in the shadows inside

 

I don't, I may be daft - but hopefully not that daft. I was making the point that I [we?] often photograph in situations where incident metering the light falling on our subject is difficult or impossible.

 

.. measure the sun or estimate it, and overexpose the sunlit parties as much as you dare......

 

Lars - I opened the thread with an idea which might improve digital metering by having a process that nailed the brightest highlight as printable, first time, without fuss, and without having to tease the exposure's mid-point with guessed exposure compensations gained from experience. My speculated idea hasn't been embraced within the thread, but estimated under or over compensations, incident metering, or reflected hand held metering is the antithesis of what I had in mind and; they are mid-tone centric requiring additional user tweaks or even worse - transference of a meter reading to the camera. If I go back to film, I'll use those devices again as I did for many years, but I find it odd that in following the 'expose to the right' principles of digital exposure we are using tweaked 'expose tfor the middle' skills.

 

Perhaps I did a lousy job in starting the thread and trying to get the idea across. I was extremely resistant to Jamie's highlight metering with a two stop dial-back, but now I have my M8 set to +1 2/3 exposure compensation for a fully adopted highlight metering technique; the camera is faster, more accurate, more fun to use than it ever was before. Whilst I used to find M8 metering a pain, I now embrace it - though it can be improved.

 

And yet; I'd still love to set those brightest highlights to a known level.........

 

Thanks to everyone who joined in.

 

................... Chris

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[sean_reid]

Hi Chris,

 

I simply set the exposure so that the histogram nearly kisses the right side of the graph.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[guywalder]

interesting discussion Chris, although I am not clear on one point. Are you saying that your technique gives you good results out of camera, or are you using curves in RAW on most images?

I guess the latter? as the main subject will vary in relative brightness to the highlights...

 

I absolutely agree that bracketing and chimping are non-starters. In fact I find that I do better with my M7 often as not, and I am sure that no small part of that is knowing that I cant chimp and that I concentrate more on the subject rather than the camera!