Theory Notes

Light metering is about measuring how much light is entering your camera when taking a picture. There are two ways of doing this: The Reflective meters measure the light that reflects off of the subject. This varies a lot because of the looks of the person, for example, if they are wearing a light shirt it will reflect a lot more light than if they are wearing a dark shirt. Within reflective meters, there exists weighted metering or spot metering. Weighted metering takes a general metering of the entire scene like it is viewed through the camera lens, yet more emphasis is placed on the central part of the image. Then there is also Spot metering focuses on a small portion of that same scene. This lets you measure the amount of contras in different portions to determine the contrast range. Then there is also another way of metering light; Incident light metering. Which measure the light that falls onto the subject. Usually done by using a small white dome on the top of the meter cell. With the incident metering, you need to stand by the subject, and point then white dome at the camera, by which the meter then measures the amount of light falling onto the location and gives you a number.