Sekonic L-758D - first outing

Castleton Inversion
Originally uploaded by thefatcat44

Yesterday I wrote about the frightening world I had entered by buying a Sekonic lightmeter.

Well today I took it out for it's first field trip. The location, in this image, was on the side of Mam Tor - the Shaking Mountain. So named, because it landslides regulalry, so much so that the local authorities gave up trying to maintain the road that ran around its flanks and just let it slide down the hillside - the remains of it are still visible.

So, excited by the mist filling the valley below me, I assembled my camera and its tripod. There I was, primed for action. Normally I would guess at the level of filtration required and slide them into the holder, take shots, adjust exposure, add/remove filters, more shots, more adjustments to get the histogram right. It was this palaver I hoped to avoid.

So I did just as Lee Filters recommend themselves. I took a spot reading from a midtone on the foreground at f16 and noted the shutter speed. Then took a reading from a midtone in the sky and noted the shutterspeed. From my pocket I pulled my little laminated chart of shutter speeds and counted the full stops between the two readings - 5 stops. So I put 5 stops of filtration in the holder and positioned the grads at the right point and set the camera to f16 with the foreground shutter speed and pressed the shutter.

BLINKIES!!!!!!! The overexposure warning lit up the screen like paparazzi flashguns at at a Britney Spears event. This should not be happening. I speeded up the shutter and got the exposure I wanted, but I shouldn't have had to do that.

Looking across that valley I realised what the issue is. It is quite critical what you judge to be a mid tone - both for the sky and the foreground. I think the foreground reading I had taken was from an area that was a bit too dark and the sky reading was from an area of the sky a bit brighter than a midtone.

I tried again and slowly it started to work. You have to 'get your eye in' on what a true mid tone is. Then the results are much more reliable.

Tonight I am going back to the Lee Filters book. In there is a second method of taking the readings with the light meter - from memory it involves taking several readings froma scene and averaging them. Sounds complicated. It is probably more complicated than it sounds. These lightmeters seem to be that way!

I will let you know how I get on.