Light Meter and the FS700
- Thread starter AndrewSP
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Jim Ritscher
Well-known member
Someone else may have a better answer, but set the camera to read in ISO and perhaps shutter speed. These are numbers you can feed directly into the light meter.
Ryan Patrick O'Hara
Veteran
I'd get a gray card, your meter, and a waveform. You should be able to see how the camera sees compared to your readings.
ScottNelson
Well-known member
I still carry my old Minolta IV F in my kit with both incident and spot attachment.
Agree with Jim, I just enter shutter speed and ISO and use spot to see the range of light and incident for an average.
Agree with Jim, I just enter shutter speed and ISO and use spot to see the range of light and incident for an average.
Bern Caughey
Veteran
Meters are invaluable for setting complicated lighting's ratios, but require a lot of experience to master.
Hard light vs soft vs side vs back, etc, each require different interpretations. Even differences in background brightness will effect the interpretation.
Hard light vs soft vs side vs back, etc, each require different interpretations. Even differences in background brightness will effect the interpretation.
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That's the same one I use, just lost the spot attachment. I don't have a tremendous amount of experience with it, but more than enough to check lighting (though that took a lot of mistakes along the way).
The shutter speed instead of CINE 24 makes a lot of sense actually, I'm assuming the CINE 24 is setup for a 180 degree shutter anyway, so the flexibility makes a lot more sense considering.
Thanks everybody for their responses, cleared things right up.
Shoot a Kodak 18% gray card with camera exposure set to give you a 0 gain 50 IRE reading on a waveform monitor. Read the light at the gray card with an incident meter or read the card with a spot meter and match the meter to your camera exposure setting for iris and shutter speed to get a true meter ISO reference for middle gray. Zone 5 for Ansel Adams zone system. You can also find the exposure that gives you an 8 bit value level of 128,128,128 in photoshop if there is no waveform reference available. This gives a calibrated visual reference point between the meter, the camera, and your eyes for the chart. Forget the camera's nominal ISO speed, it probably won't be exactly the same.
starcentral
Veteran
^ and if you don't have a waveform monitor, just use your cameras built in spot meter if it has one. It's usually a square box that shows up in the middle of your VF and gives an IRE read out.
Once you do this you will be off to the races and be able to rate the ISO of your camera yourself with your particular lenses and know for sure when you use your meter it is matched up to your camera.
I use a light meter with my Sony F3 for all my digital film style shoots and recently broke down an entire light setup for a music video shoot I did a few weeks back. You can read about it here:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...-scene&p=1986200339&viewfull=1#post1986200339
As someone else suggested, a lot of people curse light meters but that's because you really need to be sure you are using it properly. This might sound obvious but ALWAYS put the meter facing the same direction as the persons face is! Generally that's why you see people put the meter right in front of the models face. It's no use to take a light meter of the direct sun, then set your lens f-stop accordingly if the persons back is facing the sun.
Once you do this you will be off to the races and be able to rate the ISO of your camera yourself with your particular lenses and know for sure when you use your meter it is matched up to your camera.
I use a light meter with my Sony F3 for all my digital film style shoots and recently broke down an entire light setup for a music video shoot I did a few weeks back. You can read about it here:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...-scene&p=1986200339&viewfull=1#post1986200339
As someone else suggested, a lot of people curse light meters but that's because you really need to be sure you are using it properly. This might sound obvious but ALWAYS put the meter facing the same direction as the persons face is! Generally that's why you see people put the meter right in front of the models face. It's no use to take a light meter of the direct sun, then set your lens f-stop accordingly if the persons back is facing the sun.
olof
DVXuser Sponsor
I still love my old Gossen Lunapros. They are from the 70's and still work great. I also have an older Gossen that does not even require batteries but it is not as great at very low light.
I use them for checking chroma screen lighting and dynamic range when I set up lighting. I guess I am old school but whenever I do studio lighting I use a light meter, it is just so easy and accurate. much easier than reading a scope, though I use them as well.
The only thing the Gossens don't do is flash exposure and I always used a Polaroid for that in the old days anyway and today you have instant histograms and LCD review when shooting digital stills anyway.
I know we are talking video here but all the old film techniques still work very well. And is it not nice to know you have exactly a 3 stop difference between fill and key. A light meter will tell you that instantly.
If you like the zone system a light meter is a must.
I use them for checking chroma screen lighting and dynamic range when I set up lighting. I guess I am old school but whenever I do studio lighting I use a light meter, it is just so easy and accurate. much easier than reading a scope, though I use them as well.
The only thing the Gossens don't do is flash exposure and I always used a Polaroid for that in the old days anyway and today you have instant histograms and LCD review when shooting digital stills anyway.
I know we are talking video here but all the old film techniques still work very well. And is it not nice to know you have exactly a 3 stop difference between fill and key. A light meter will tell you that instantly.
If you like the zone system a light meter is a must.