Mark, I love watching your photography tutorials on this channel. I like your way of explaining things in a very simplistic way. Thank You, Mark and Adorama TV for helping me to improve my photography skills.

Hi Mark, I stumbled across your video's on lighting and light metering, and suddenly everything made sense with how to build contrast lighting into my shots. What a difference it has made, some of the shots I have previously failed to achieve, I now realise why. Love these videos so please keep up the good work.

Led panel explanation is the absolute best I've seen. Great job Mark!

Solid advice Mark. Point to the camera or point to the light, whatever works for you is the right way but always be consistent... BTW, I'm still right 😜

Dude! I miss you and your photography teachings. You were the one I started learning basic photography rules. It's great to see you again. 😊

Always great videos, thanks for posting this one, it's been something I haven't been super confident of for some time.

Finally found a source for studio lighting!! I'm a longtime photo enthusiast that just began playing around with studio lighting. Thanks Mark for giving me a reliable source of great information.

Absolutely the best explanation ever, of when you should point the meter at the camera or at the light. And I have watched a ton of metering videos. :-)

Always enjoy your technical explanations. Thanks!

Bravo Mark! Bravo. Simple yet effective. Anyone can understand.

Great explanation and examples Mark. Thank you very much.

Great and very helpful video, Mark! I just subscribed. Thanks for making this video.

Great explanation. About time someone went into more (accurate) detail. It is important to emphasize that it all comes down to a personal decision as to how we want to expose our image. And to that end, I would only point out the importance of "protecting" the highlights, especially in the digital age of capture. Which, in turn, leads me, personally, to lean more towards aiming the "open" dome at the light source rather than the camera. If more shadow detail is desired, that's where the importance of reflectors and/or secondary lights come in. Also, you did a great job of explaining the "flat" dome. Particularly when wanting to know the value of multiple lights and/or reflectors in a given scenario. Well done, sir.

Excellent teaching, as always with Mark! 👍

Very nicely explained and great demos. Many thanks.

"Please-Read" the learned debate below amongst super-professionals who have much important practical experience to offer. "Please-Read" and thank you, Mark Wallace, for initiating this inspiring debate...

Learnt a lot from both you and Gavin over the years - thanks!

Excelent explanation. You and Gavin are the best!

As usual, superb teaching. Thanks

Thanks for the great advises and all the invaluable teaching material & resources that you guys at Adorama TV put out, absolutely priceless! One question though: if you're pointing the meter at the camera (vs at the light), wouldn't it be better to point the meter sensor in the direction that light is hitting the lens, just to more accurately measure the average light intensity that is reflected from the subject and all surroundings and hits the lens?

Very informative, although as a beginner, maybe hard to remember everytheng, must watch again, thanks Mark, enjoy all Viseos.

Best light metering tutorial .... thanks for the lesson

Even my teachers couldn't explain it this well. Thanks!

Thanks that helps good explanation on where and why to point the luminisphere.

Thank you for your tutorial video about lightmeter. I learn a lot from it ☺

Thanks Mark, explaining in simple and easy way

Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

Great lesson! Thank You very much!

Good to see two lines of thought on the way to use a light meter, but i am on the side of always point in the direction of the light source. It's far better practice to protect the highlights than the shadows. Once you overexpose and blow your highlights that's it, no way of coming back i would rather have a little grain in my shadows anytime.

Great explanation !

You are my hero! Thank you so much!🤌🏾🤌🏾🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍

Best flash metering video I found. Thx!

Really good explanation/ Well done!

I would love to see a follow up tutorial that discusses light ratios. Thanks for advancing m knowledge about light metering.

So much good information!

Again , the best description .....

Best photography teacher on KZfaq!

you are a born teacher! grate info. question...where can i purchase the hooks that i see your softboxes are hanging on?

Very, very good. Thanks.

Excellent tutorial 😉

The dome explanation was the best

Excellent thank you

Perfect videos for beginners and it all makes sense to me now, thankyouu so much for making such an insightful video and hoping to see more of these 🫶🏻🫶🏻

I've done well managing exact exposures over my career by using the meter the way the instruction manual states - For portrait work, use with the Lumisphere extended, meter under the chin pointed exactly into the camera. Rarely do you ever need to retract the Lumi.

Thank you for going in depth with this!

This is a great teacher

Great job.

Love it!!!!❤❤❤❤❤❤

awesome info, thanks

Well explained. Retired 20 years ago and things haven't changed

Very nice video! What is a 1-degree spot photometer, Mark?

Now I can understand that. Thanks

Thanks, appreciated!

I am following your excellent series on lighting. However there is something I would like to ask. When after setting the Keylight setting in a three light setup doe you turn off the Key Light to set the Fill and Hair Lights?

The light meter you are using, i bought one three years ago and used it mabe about five times, but that's because i didn't know how to use it, this has given me some insight, still not sure about out side though, it seems it gives vastly different readings, especially in bright conditions, should you shield the dome with your hand point it at the sky, or straight at the camera, could you do a lesson outside, with natural light and flash please

Coming from a commercial film (transparency) background, and a student, and dear friend of the late Dean Collins, I'll argue to point at the main light source. "Preserving Highlights". Is that not what you are suppose to do with digital? I could end my argument there. But, Dean would say, The "diffused highlight" is what our "objective" is when it comes to exposure. Shadows are "subjective". Meaning basically when metering, that your area if critical exposure (diffused highlight) will stay put but your shadows will change from shoot to shoot. Some shadows could be dark, medium or light. So if they are ever changing, then your meter reading will change if including the shadow side if pointed at camera. And so will your diffused highlight. Meaning the area you DO want exposed perfectly will change because of different shadow values. That is not what we want. We want a constant. So aiming AT the main light source gives us that constant then we decide how much fill we want without changing the value of the diffused highlight. Now if you add a fill light and have it near camera, yes, that light will "add" to the overall exposure and you will need to aim it so you do pick up that fill light. But only if it adds to the diffused highlight's value. Reflector cards usually do not.

Annabel is certainly a "Creation". Thanks for the metering tips.

Nice tutorial, I would also add to calibrate your lightmeter with your camera as the lightmeter out of the box gives you a reading in line with the iso sensitivity standards, however unfortunately camera manufacturers don’t exactly follow the same standard when assigning the iso values, i.e. the camera internal meter is calibrated to the sensor not the iso sensitivity standard, so different cameras, different manufacturers will have a slightly different metering values for the exact same lighting conditions, and very rarely any of this values coincide with a lightmeter ones

How would you use the same light meter if it’s outdoors and only using natural light (and when would you use a gray card to get a reading?). Thank you.

the concept is really eye opening, but how would this work in natural light outside? Where do I point my light meter to?

So, dome out and point at Key light to determine exposure to preserve highlights, dome in and point to all the lights to determine lighting ratios. Is that about right?

Good points but every time i see these things it always different. Some will say point the meter at the camera, others at the subject others at the lighting. Either in incident mode reflective mode. And i have an extra lumidisc so what is that used for. On a sekonic L308 Bii light meter. The lumisdome slides to one side and you fit this lumisdisc in its place. One being incident meter mode the other reflective mode metering.

Great video! Have not used a light meter before and plan to get one (always used the reflective in the camera) Understand much more about incident light meters. Now, if you get F4 as your key light entry and set your camera to F4 and you get a different F stop reading from your hair or back light, what do you need to do to get a proper exposure of everything (camera setting, light adjustment, etc both continuous and flash setups) maybe i missed something, but can someone explain in more detail regarding this?

Thank you

Hi can you make how to understand light meter to the camera setting thank you im biginer for photography, more power from Philippines

Can you calibrate the L-478D-U for a specific cinema camera and save it in the same way as you calibrate for still cameras.

In my opinion , at the begining we should define our project , for example. I take this photo with fstop 4 , ISO 100, shutter speed 1/160 and without any light this photo will be totally dark. After that we will adjust our main light with these preanalysed setting. Based on our thaughts we should adjust light depending ratio for fill light , hair light and also background light. At the end we will test or will do metering again, with all of these lights all together in order to achieve preanalysed setting , I mean fstop 4 , shutter speed 1/160 and ISO 100. if there is any little diffence we will fix it with ISO setting although after fixing one by one of each light we won't meet this problem. Am I right dear Mark ?

Hi 👋 I have a question. How do you set/tune a lightmeter for measuring the light/ highlights? It suppose to treat it as a middle grey at the result, doesn't it? Can't understand this. Thanks for your answer!

I watched a tutorial recently that suggests setting your camera one stop lower than what the light reader suggests (when lighting skin tones). Something to do with the meter exposing for middle grey??

Thank your.

Hi Mark, love your videos because they're so informative and incredibly helpful! Quick question about metering for multiple lights, so in this example your key light was at F/4, does that mean that you metered and tweaked each light until they each gave you a value of F/4 as well? Thanks, Ren

I've been learn that always measure to where the light is brightest.

Superb

Mark, I think I understand everything....but what happens or what should you do when you're outside, on a sunny day? A gray, cloudy day?

Question : if i want to use a Camera Light Meter for Aviation Photography which Model would you recommend me ? Please... is the Sekonic speedmaster L-858D-U the one i should get or something else ? Please

Perfect.

When I meter my lights I measure main , fill and reflected lights from my outside highlight strip or aux. lights A little can go a long way if you give it time .I try for fun things. No harm no foul. One might see something they like.

If I'm balancing flash on a very bright day ( think high overcast but yet very bright or bright sun ), should my lumisphere be up or down when metering the flash? For example, let's say my ambient reading is F 6.3. Now I want to get my flash to fire at F 6.3. Should the lumisphere be up or down when metering the flash?

For the key, fill and back light - lumisphere down, point the meter at each light source, but still meter to the key light to figure out what my overall reading is. Correct?

Hi from Poland. I'm do not understand something. Light from softbox f.4. At f3.4 there will be overexposures, right?

Quando muda porcentagem do flash, muda o diafragma no flashmater ? Como funciona essa parte

Never having used a light meter but would love to start using one, why meter the hairlight? How does that factor into your settings if the primary concern is overexposure as people state below? Do you average the hairlight into the main light's settings? Great video!

Iam pointin the meter to my camera when Ian not using a flash, and when I using a flash then I point my meter to my flash so I can have info on how strong the flash is projecting.

nice video

Hello Mark, thank you! I just want to know whether the meter reading is applicable to all types of camera e.g Full vs. Micro four third. Thanks

Soooo, if you aim the meter to the main light source, the shadows will be darker. And if you aim the meter to the camera reading both the main and fill in lights, the highlights will be a little brighter. If however you aim the meter to just the fill in light, that area will be properly exposed, but the highlights will be much more over exposed. But now what if the difference between the lighted area and the darker area is great? For example: the lighted area is f/8, and the darker area is f/4...that's 2 f/stops difference. The lighted area is 4X brighter then the dark area. But what if you aimed the meter at the camera in this situation, how will things look? Of course now you can not properly expose for both areas correctly . One or the other has to be over or under exposed. If this were black and white film, and you were developing it yourself, you can expose for the dark area, develop normally, then print for the highlights. why ? If you meter for the lighted area, the dark area will have a low muddy look. But if you increase the contrast, then there'll be very little or no detail in the shadow area. So expose for shadows and print for highlights. But you must consider many things: the latitude of the film, and the difference between the dark and light areas, and how you want your photo to look.

What about reflected light metering?

How did u get f3.4 when my camera has only 3.2 and 3.5?

My light meter show FNo. and U How can I fixed it? because I can’t use with my flash

My hero

Mark, I use Flashpoint. Do I fire by shooting a picture? Or, can I just hit the test flash on my trigger? AND, what ISO and SS did you have dialed into your flash meter? Last, if your key was at f/4 and you shot at 3.?, wouldn’t you be blowing out your highlights? Thanks bunches.

i love…. Annabel

Sorry i was looking Annabelle ! What did you say about the light meter ???? 😂

Personally I think it makes more sense to meter the ratios than the overall scene. For that I can just take a shot and look at that.

Most of us don't have a studio with lights. It would be good to have a lesson out in the open.

How about the 308 where there is no dome in?

I did that with L-858D , than I measure F8, shoot frame was overexposed . I take another shoot with F11 same set up that was perfect. I could not find any explanation. Have any advice?

hey mark . nice video i have question ? is that Sekonic lightmeters work in high speed with godox flash ? i mean can i meters the godox flashes like ad600 or ad600 pro in highspeed with Sekonic lightmeters ?

Hi Mark, Could you explain how you started your photography journey? I have been photographing for over 20 years and my journey started funny. The short story is I brought a very cheap film camera for a friend and used that camera to make sure it worked. Needless to say that friend received a different gift. Be bless bro!!

Lumisphere or invercone in the UK