Technical Task B - exposure meters

Difference between ambient and flash, and how to meter for both.

Ambient light, which is also called available light. This light is the one that is presented all the time during our exposure. The best example for ambient light is simply natural light, but there are some other examples light the light at home. Photographers use ambient light in studios, called hot light, the name simple comes from the fact that they are usually on for long period of time and get very hot quickly. It's simply whatever light source there is at the time, when we're taking the photos. It is really important to find the right way to measure the light hitting your subject in an ambient lightning. We can do this by finding an appropriate exposure using the handheld ambient light meter. Because ambient light is non-directional, most people want to use the meter when they're in an environment offering diffused light. You simply place the meter in front of models/subject face, as close as you can and take the reading. You can take the reading few different times to see if it's any different, or maybe take a reading every few photos you take. 

Flash is simply an additional light source that a photographer adds to the scene. It is only a single burst of light that exist only for a short period of time. When using an additional flash in our photos, it has a really large effect on our choice of shutter speed and aperture. We also have to be careful as anything which is close to the flash is exposed to more light than anything further away. It is very easy to flash meter in studio. All you have to do is, set the right settings up on the meter, the same as you want to use on your camera, which would probably be something similar to this : ISO 200, 1/125 sec. Then you have to connect it to the main flash that you're using in a studio, and by placing it in front (usually the lightest part) of your subject/model, you are ready to take the metering by simply pressing the correct button on the metering mode. This makes all of the flashes that you are going to use go off, and the flash meter takes the metering, which means it gives you the correct aperture to use. 

It is quite challenging to balance ambient light with flash for most people. In most of the situations, while using automatic settings it works quite well, it is a little bit more difficult to balance them two on manual settings. The problem with using automatic setting is that you can loose the control very quick, because we might think that it seems easy to set the camera on automatic and let it solve the problem for you, but then we find that the results are not exactly what we wanted. In my opinion the difference is straight forward, I don't really like using flash because I think the photos look weird. I really like naturally looking photos, and I prefer to use ambient light than a flash if I am able to choose. 

Difference between incident and reflective meter readings.

Incident meter readings, is most preferable way to measure the light. Handheld incident meter reads the intensity of light falling on the subject. The reading is taken from a position of the subject. Incident meters accurately measures the amount of light falling on the subject. It is always very accurate and records the tones as well as colours and values correctly. 

Reflective meter readings, read the intensity of the light reflecting off the subject. It measures the light after it hit's the subject, however they are affected by the reflection of the subject's surface. We have to keep in mind that the reflective meter will take a take a different reading for a white object than a black object.

In order to record accurately any scene that you want to photograph, whether it's a person, an object or landscape, you have to measure the amount of light that exist in the scene. The two basic methods of measuring the light are you can either take the reflected reading by measuring the light reflecting off your subject or you can take an incident reading by measuring the light as it falls on to the subject.