Photography Strobes
What Is a light meter in photography?
I was told that light meters play an important role when shooting with strobes. I'm still fairly new to the photography world, but I was curious what all this meter hype is all about. Any suggestion, comments???
light meters were very important in the past when using traditional photography ie. film, developing etc. They were important because you wouldn't see the results until later and so you needed to be sure that the 'exposure' was right for the photograph. You can't do that very well using the naked eye, because your eyes adjust themeselves to the light.
A long time ago (40/50 years maybe), it was rare to find a camera with a built in light meter, and if they did they were expensive. So seperate external light meters were sold. From this, you could then adjust the speed of your shutter (eg. 1/250 second) and the aperture, eg. F6.3 to suit the conditions and the speed of your film. Nowadays, electronics are cheaper and virtually all cameras have built in light meters that adjust the camera automatically (though serious amateur cameras will allow you to overide these settings when necessary, eg. taking a pciture of someone in front of bright light.
Nowadays, professional prhotographers probably still use them, but when you use digital you see the result immediately and can usually retake the picture anyway at zero cost.
For strobes, I guess the problem is that the light isnt constant and your camera's built in light meter will be tricked. A light meter may help you overcome this.
Ingeneral, if you can, use a slower shutter speed and you will get better more reliable exposure because you overlap the strobing effect.
With digital its less critical, take a few shots and hopefully one or more will be succesful but of course a strobing effect on a still picture isn't very obvious !
Good luck anyway!
Digital Photography 1 on 1: Episode 54: Speedlights vs. Studio Strobes