Using The In-Camera Light Meter
If you want to know if your camera settings will capture the correct exposure, just look at the in-camera light meter.
It came as a surprise to me that some experienced photographers don’t even know there is a light meter in the camera or know how to read it.
At one of my large youth sports shoots, I had hired four other photographers to help photograph the 500 soccer players we would taking photos of that day.
Early in the morning I set up all four camera stations, setting the shutter speed to 160, aperture to f8 and ISO to 200. There was very little ambient (natural) light early in the morning. The studio lights in soft boxes were providing more than 90 percent of the light.
By 11 a.m., it had gotten bright and sunny. Even though we were taking the photos in tents to help control the ambient light, I wanted to check and see what the ambient light was metering on the in-camera meter.
“Joe, what’s the ambient light reading on your camera,” I asked the photographer next to me. Joe had shot with me for several years and also worked with other youth sports photographers to make a little money on the side.
“The what,” he asked as he gave me a strange look.
“What is the reading on the light meter in your camera,” I asked.
“I don’t have a light meter in the camera,” he told me. He was using my camera, so I knew there was a light meter in the camera. On some of my cameras the light meter is at the bottom of the viewfinder, while on a couple of others it is along the right side of the viewfinder.
Most light meters will give you readings from -3 stops to +3 stops. If the reading is at -3, it means your image will be three stops under exposed. If ambient light is giving you all the light for your exposure (you are not using flash or studio strobes) you will need to adjust your aperture, shutter speed and iso until you can get a properly exposed photo.
Take a look at the photos at right to see what the light meter looks like. The hash mark below the light meter scale shows you what the exposure is for the current settings. In the top photo, the exposure is dead on, and in the bottom photo the exposure is two stops over-exposed.
If you look through the viewfinder and you don’t see indicator under the light meter’s scale, it could be because your settings are more than three stops over- or under-exposed.
Make adjustments to the shutter speed, aperture or ISO (more to multiple settings) until you see the indicator mark appear under the light meter.
Remember, the exposure triangle is ISO, shutter speed and aperture. Those are the three settings you can adjust that affect exposure.
