Light meters with C300

indiawilds

indiawilds

Veteran
How many of you use external light meters while shooting with C300? Do you find the waveform monitor good enough for correct exposures or do you use external meters?
 
Here's the deal: yes you can use a light meter with a c300 or almost any other camera, but first you need to establish a relationship between what the camera sees as middle gray, a given camera iso, and your meter reading. You should also be aware that with a camera like the C 300 and the flexibility that it gives the user with regard to creating custom picture profiles, your meter readings will probably only be accurate within a given picture profile. So if you are using a generic video picture profile, and have a metering set up for that profile and then switch to EOS std, the camera and your meter might not agree quite so well.
 
I just wrapped a feature and I used my meter consistently for our night time exteriors. I'd light with the meter, setting ratios then adjust then confirm exposures via the waveform on the C300 or falsecolors on my external monitor.

I was exposing for C-log. I found it very useful and pretty accurate for exposure.
 
I found establishing consistency with my light meter and the camera across multiple CPs to be difficult and time consuming. While I'll always have a light meter on set, nowadays I find myself lighting by eye and using the waveform monitor as my primary luminance tool.
 
These days I use an army of exposure tools including waveform, false color and a properly calibrated reference monitor, after years of working with a meter. I'll still pull it out for pre-light days, or matching levels on a re-light (i.e. recreating the level of a given unit when I go in closer and add diffusion, for instance) but for settings exposures and ratios, not so much.
 
I use my sekonic 758cine for pretty much everything... I shoot a bunch of cameras from 5dmkii to epic ... the 758 hasn't done me wrong in terms of metering. To each their own but I prefer to have an accurate calibrated light meter over an on board meter or internal waveform monitor. The sekonic 758 is sort of like a lighting condom, just use it in the moment to know you're safe later.
 
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