 BetterPhoto Member |
How to Use a Light Meter For Weddings I have a Sony F717 digital camera and I have a Stroboframe bracket and external flash. I would like to use it in manual for wedding photography and was wondering if I needed a light meter. If so, what kind and how would I use it? I am on a budget. Thanks!
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anonymous |
From my experience (which isn't a lot of weddings) weddings go too fast to think about light meters. I photographed a wedding on Sat and used my camera in manual without a light meter. I just used my in camera meter and metered off their skin which is close to medium grey - photos turned out lovely.
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robert G. Fately |
Tina, I'm not familiar with the Sony F717, but if it has the ability to use external flash then you're better off using it. Due respect to Natalie, but there are few occassions where a light meter (or at least being awre of lighting) is more important than a wedding. You don't mention if your external flash is auto-capable; hopefully it is. Now, first, understand in reference to a flash unit the word "automatic" connotes two different types of auto-lighting control. The basic type uses a sensor in the flash unit itself - basically this sensor shuts off the flash when it receives enough light reflected from the subject (since exectronic flashes last from 1/1000th to 1/40,000th of a second, all this is impossible to see with the naked eye). The fancier external flashes can communicate with the camera body and thus shut off when the camera tells them enough light has been generated. I'll assume your flash is of the former variety, which is more likely. And, that you have the necessary cable to connect it to the 717 while it sits on the Stroboframe. So, if you can set the flash to, say, f4 and also set the lens on the camera to f4, then you should get decent exposures. If you really want to use the flash in manual mode (or have no other choice), then I don't think a light meter will help anyway. That is, you could go and buy a flash meter (I think the cheapest are about $100) but even then the nature of a wedding is that there are a lot of spontaneous shots - while you could trigger the flash and have your assistant take a reading for a posed session (what? you don't have an assistant?) the reality is that for the reception you won't be able to control or predict if you will be 4 feet or 12 feet away from the subject at hand - and that difference in distance means that you'd have to constantly readjust your aperture on the lens. Trust me, this is not something you'll want to do - you'll be spending so much time re-adjusting the gear that you'll miss the great shots. While an external flash has great merits - reducing red-eye, allowing for larger groups or more distant shots thanks to having more sheer power than most cameras' internal units, etc., the fact is that, for a new user who has to ask the question, a manual flash at an event like a wedding will probably be way more trouble than it's worth.
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