Light Meter Sekonic L-758DR 2 of 3

Part two has been a long time coming. I've now got to the point that I more often than not, use my Light Meter, that's partly because I'm a gear geek, but it's mainly because I can nail my camera exposure every time without shooting dark or overexposing an image. I now shoot manual 99/100 times. Sure you can use Program mode and often it'll give you a decent result, but until you attempt full control over your camera, you can't fully understand how much control the camera has over the process. Occasionally I'll pop back to AP Aperture Priority, or SP Shutter Priority if I need control over just my aperture or shutter speed.


Anyway back to my Light Meter. I did a shoot the other day with a man who is starting a consultancy business. He's a good looking chap, so the shoot was easy, but it was made easier by me having the equipment to shoot confidently. We did this shoot in a board room with an umbrella camera left and a reflector camera right, I aimed the shoot through umbrella at the reflector which allowed the strobe to fire across the subject, rather than at him. The idea behind this is that part of the light will hit the subject, and part of the light will hit the reflector which bounces into the camera right side of his face. This set up allows me to not have to worry about having my shadows too dark.

I had a chat with my subject Esteban to warm him up a little and then asked him to take a seat. All I had to do was set my meter to wireless, aim the meter at my key light from Esteban's right cheek and pushed the go button on the meter. The important thing here is that I had the dome of the meter exposed. The meter gave me f8 which I set in my camera. The problem many people face is that they aim the meter at the camera and fire the strobe. This works but doesn't give you the true tone I am looking for on Esteban's right cheek, that method will only give you an average value. It then becomes the photographers choice on how he lights the shadows.

Anyway, post processing was a breeze, I only tweaked the brightness in Lightroom and didn't need to touch the exposure slider. Job done.