Light Meter even needed with 7D?

G

Gene Sung

Veteran
So I finally order my 7D (hurray for me).

For the past year, I've been working on a film project that I have been shooting on 16mm film. I have a really nice sekonic meter that I use for that.

Is there any use for a light meter with the 7D? I rarely if ever have seen anyone use a meter with any type of DSLR.

Would a meter be useful for taking basic light readings with the 7D, or does the 7D make light meters obsolete?
 
gene_can_sing said:
So I finally order my 7D (hurray for me).

For the past year, I've been working on a film project that I have been shooting on 16mm film. I have a really nice sekonic meter that I use for that.

Is there any use for a light meter with the 7D? I rarely if ever have seen anyone use a meter with any type of DSLR.

Would a meter be useful for taking basic light readings with the 7D, or does the 7D make light meters obsolete?
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When shooting digital a light meter can be useful depending on how you work. It's useful when you're trying to communicate with your gaffer what stop you want on different parts of the set or desired contrast ratios. It's also good for location scouts & to get a general idea of how much light you are working with. I'm not sure that it would be a good idea to set exposure with a meter on any digital video cameras at this point. Just go by a waveform, it's faster and more accurate.
 
I am currently co-DPing a short using a 5D. I have used my meter on every scene so far. Don't plan on that changing. How the heck do you set lighting ratios with a histogram or waveform?

If you know your lighting instruments, you can pre-light the scene. Like I am doing tomorrow for our Saturday shoot. I'll have the scene lit in 30 minutes flat on Saturday morning and save everyone a ton of time.

I wouldn't be caught shooting a movie without a meter.
 
PerroneFord said:
I am currently co-DPing a short using a 5D. I have used my meter on every scene so far. Don't plan on that changing. How the heck do you set lighting ratios with a histogram or waveform?

If you know your lighting instruments, you can pre-light the scene. Like I am doing tomorrow for our Saturday shoot. I'll have the scene lit in 30 minutes flat on Saturday morning and save everyone a ton of time.

I wouldn't be caught shooting a movie without a meter.
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And then you won't be draining your batteries by keeping live view on all the time.
 
salils said:
I'm not sure that it would be a good idea to set exposure with a meter on any digital video cameras at this point. Just go by a waveform, it's faster and more accurate.
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More accurate at what? Telling you if you are going to blow the highlights or crush the blacks? Yes that's true. But what about all the subtle stuff in between the two extremes? How do you know when the actresses face is reading a third stop above the male lead? How do you know that your shadows are falling in the range of natural daybreak and not 4pm? You can tell that looking at the waveform?

I had 5 instruments lighting a living room scene with a moving camera and 2 moving actors last week. How do you resolve that on a waveform monitor when you are setting it up?

We have no waveform monitor on set. We are shooting very much like we had film. And you know what? It's working beautifully. I had to light a nightclub scene on Sunday with real club lights, an ambient boost from a softbox off the ceiling, and a moving beauty light. Two walk throughs with the meter and I was done with basic lighting. Then I just massaged the moving light to get the effect the director wanted.
 
ydgmdlu said:
Why not use the optical viewfinder for framing purposes?
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Impossible given that the camera is on a stabilizer. No sticks are being used on this shoot. And using the optical also restricts how you can move with the camera. No cranes, crabbing becomes nearly impossible, no complex or combined moves, etc.
 
Like I said, if you're concerned about precise contrast ratios and such it is useful to have. But having a waveform or atleast a histogram is pretty essential on a digital shoot especially considering how problematic highlights are with digital.
It's good to hear you're having sucess with lighting by the meter though, couldn't do this with cameras like the HVX and DVX.
 
Don't know about other peoples experience, but for me the light meter has been working great to set exposure. At least for 320 ISO. If I'm lighting to F4 and I get F4 on my key with my meter set to 24fps 320 ISO my key is right. Just like a film camera. It has been dependable so far.
 
PerroneFord said:
I am currently co-DPing a short using a 5D. I have used my meter on every scene so far. Don't plan on that changing. How the heck do you set lighting ratios with a histogram or waveform?

If you know your lighting instruments, you can pre-light the scene. Like I am doing tomorrow for our Saturday shoot. I'll have the scene lit in 30 minutes flat on Saturday morning and save everyone a ton of time.

I wouldn't be caught shooting a movie without a meter.
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I had the chance of working on the set of Beastly and asked the DP ( who DP'ed Australia with hugh jackman ) and she doesn't use a light meter for ratio's. She lives by the rule of lighting with the eyes.
 
PaPa said:
I had the chance of working on the set of Beastly and asked the DP ( who DP'ed Australia with hugh jackman ) and she doesn't use a light meter for ratio's. She lives by the rule of lighting with the eyes.
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Did you watch that movie?
 
PaPa said:
Yes I have, and it was beautifully done.
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Then I guess she has good eyes. Frankly, it felt overlit to me, but perhaps that was the style she wanted. I know it was supposed to be "epic" but I didn't get that from it. For a contrast, I watched Mongol this week. I preferred the epic lighting in that far more.
 
Cool, i'll definitely give mongol a look and Australia with a more critical eye.
 
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