Picked up my Sekonic Flashmate L-308X a few days ago and loving it. Helps when you find great video tutorials like this. Very easy to follow! Thanks and I will be back.
The aperture setting used to confuse me too until I started experimenting strobe lights. The light meter is a god send. Thanks for the informative video. Pank
David you are an asset to Adorama I've been watching you for a few years now and the help that you give me is wonderful I cannot explain how helpful you are to me there are no words to describe how good you are keep up the good work always will be looking for you
Mordy's question really threw a wrench in my cereal, you know because I'm watching this while eating breakfast, but your answer was able to throw some light onto it 😂😂😂 Great explanation as always Dave👍👍
back in my film days is when I got my flashmeter to use with my studio strobes. Never failed me. Worked like a charm. Like you said, with digital it is not really necessary but if I'm using my strobes indoors I will still use the flashmeter. Another excellent video, David
Thanks David for this video. Please do a video on Tripods! I know there's a bunch out there but would like your input as well! I'm looking for Studio and on location.
great video, but there is ONE Digital camera that CAN meter the flash and one Film camera, a Hasselblad H medium format dslr, they have a special flash meter function which blocks the sensor/film from receiving an image, and shows you a {high} or {LOW} result, showing what a shot would be exposed like, correct or not, to save a film shot! the Film Based Hasselblad 205Fcc can also, but using an OTF flash meter, it cuts the body socket switch when enough light has got to the film, in essence a dynamic meter, it judges exposure directly, and actively cuts flash.
Thanks for clear logical messages in this video. One point - the flash triangle is - ISO, F-Stop and Flash power. You made no mention of ISO and instead talked about shutter speed which is OK in a fill-in situation where natural light needs allowed for but not in pure manual control you were describing.
If people were willing to learn strobes and flashes, they would also find light meters essential. It's just that strobes are so expensive for most people and cumbersome to carry and set up so people don't see the need for light meters. But the meter takes all the guesswork out. The meter literally tells you how to set the camera settings based on how powerful you set your strobe.
Again great video. Can I try to explain it in a different manner? Here it goes: A light meter of the reflective type (all the ones in the cameras) want to turn everything gray (put your camera in auto everything and take a picture of a black paper filling the field of view, do the same with a white one and now put them in the middle next to each other in the centre also filling the filled of view, the 2 first shots will be more or less gray and the third will have white and black very distinct, as you gave the meter the information that there is 50% black and 50% white) with the incident meters all that matters is the light falling on the subject and not it’s properties. Try it, it’s the best way to understand it. Hope that also helped! Cheers, André
New to flash photography here! Could someone explain… I feel like aperture is a creative choice re: depth of field. When you use aperture to control the amount of light, the depth of field changes. Wouldn’t a photographer have a depth of field in mind that they want to use for creative purposes? As a example, if you’re photographing a large group, and the light meter tells you to use 2.8, the depth of field would be too shallow. Why adjust the aperture rather than the flash power? (I realize photographers adjust flash power too, but many tutorials tell you to change the aperture). Would this be when a photographer doesn’t care about depth of field? I’m a natural light photographer so I always care about depth of field. Thank you!
You are absolutely correct. Depth of field does matter and you could raise yourself flash power if you need a certain f-stop. It’s always a give-and-take though. You might already be at full power on your flash (a speedlite in a large modifier, for example). Or you might prefer to keep flash power lower for faster exhale time and longer battery life. In either case, you’d have to either open up your aperture and/or raise your ISO.
I adjust flash to match my aperture, for example group photo i use f4 or f5.6, i power up the flash to match f4 or f5.6. if changing only the aperture. You get a bright or dark image of the group
💥✨💥 That was such a great explanation in a very clear manner. Thank you. Out of all of that technical info that you’ve given on this subject in such great depth it leaves me with only one question... can you please tell me what backdrop you have here.?? 🤟🏼
Thanks and great question. It’s one I had in my closet for years until I moved into this new space and had room to set it up. It’s just a standard painted muslin backdrop and it’s massive. Maybe 10-12 feet wide and 20 feet long.
You made an accurate statement that shutter speed doesn’t matter when it’s purely flash photography. And then you proceeded to say you are going to fix two pieces (of 3) of camera parameters at 200 iso (okay) and 1/250th of a second. Where did this magic speed come from ? Please don’t say it’s the sync speed limit. That limit just tells us what’s the fastest shutter speed we can use while not missing the window of the flash strobe.
Now what if we already have the camera exposure set to expose for the background? And then we want to get the correct exposure by only adjusting the flash power?
Thanks, David. This was one of the better flash meterings tutorials out. What could help many photographers would be to provide a similar tutorial on 2 to 3 light setups showing lighting ratios in 1/3, 1/2, 1/10, and full stops of light. Some people think I am crazy for using a light meter on almost everything I shoot but I feel I get better all-around exposures than just eye-balling it.
Sorry, but somehow this is logical and self-explanatory, at least for me, because if you use an external flash meter, then you should also set the determined values, here the aperture, manually on the camera, otherwise there will be incorrect exposures, namely too bright or too dark , that's not confusing "rocket science". In analog photography, object measurement should be preferred for negative film and light measurement with the dome for slide film, basically to get a proper exposure for each film material. The reason for this is that slide film in particular is exposed more to the lights and is therefore exposed with a bit more contrast, which looks quite good in general, but that is also a question of personal taste.
one other safety tip, if metering FLASH, Don't look at it! think the light is all bundled into a 1/20,000 second burst; so if using a 400W/s or higher, especially a 1200W/s studio light (Godox, Broncolor) these have enough 'juice' to blind you, like an arc welder striking his stick!!; and a warning, 'FIRING' to the assistants to let them know a 'flash' is going off, so they can save their sight too.
I found a listing of gear that someone is selling and there is a light meter in it and thinking of getting it if they sell the gear separate, I am not sure which meter it is, I have a question, I have introduced a reflector into my gear and after watching this video would using the reflector with a incident meter throw the reading off? I hope that make sense. I am glad I stumbled across your videos as you explain things so well and I am new to photography gear. 🙂 i do most of my captures outside but do use the flash and sometimes need a reflector
Both methods are useful, but different. And it really depends what you’re shooting. I want to see how much light is coming from that flash. So I point the meter directly at the it. In my mind, I can determine if I want to see the full power of the flash from the camera angle or not. Actually, this may need more explanation and would be a great video. Submit it at www.AskDavidBergman.com and I’ll do it!
I have a doubt, I have several exposure meters that were made at the time when the analog photo was what ruled the market, a digital minolta, an analog sekonic and a polaris, basically the minolta and the polaris are the ones that arrived to use at some point. My doubt is that on some occasion I took digital photos taking the measurement with those exposure meters and when I put the exposure information that the exposure meter marked on the camera, mostly the images came out somewhat overexposed, so I stopped using the exposure meter and Guide me more by eye, so I wonder if the exposure meters built in the 90s have something to do with the new exposure meters in the digital age? Do digital cameras work the same with old exposure meters? Greetings from Mexico and I hope you can solve my doubt.
Thanks for the helpful video. With TTL and then a TCM button like on the Godox XPro flash trigger, would that cut out the need for a separate flash meter completely since it would allow you to take the reading you've had in TTL and covert to manual? But what happens if you have a second speedlight (eg used a rim/ hair light rather than a key light) that doesn't have TTL and is only triggered either by the flash trigger in manual (or if it is an older speedlight and uses a slave unit that only fires when another flash fires?) Would that second flash require a separate flash meter to meter out the power output properly? Or would the flash trigger already have that covered? I'm a little confused how it would work.
The external meter doesn't automatically set anything in your camera. It just tells you how much light is coming from the strobe and then you can make the decision on how to set your exposure. In either case, you are still gauging the exposure based on the back-of-camera viewfinder. As I say in the video, that may work fine, but for the most accurate information, using an external meter will give you more information that you can use to set your exposure.
The best example of work with multiple flashes on this channel is any episode of On Set with Daniel Norton, IMHO. If your flashes are not TTL, meter them each separately with external meter as David suggested, then adjust accordingly, if you are shooting digital you can see the result immediately. I would probably get key light set first (and get it to manual), then move on to other groups as a ratio to what you get from key...
@@AndreiIvanov7b3 Either way works, but I actually prefer to get my background looking good first. Then add in the key light(s) on my subject. That way I can see if the front light is messing up the background and adjust accordingly.
I want to know when Sekonic is going to offer a budget meter that reads HSS it's a bloody joke that we have to spend close to $1k Aud to have that function. Until they get reasonable with pricing i will just use the TCM function on my Godox to get close then dial in flash power...
Y'a go figure why there is so few brands making Flash Meters and why even the cheapest one is still kind of expensive for what it does. I so wish Godox would have put TCM on their latest X2T transmitter, instead these idiots made it so you must get the older and super bully Pro version of almost the same price just to have this functionality (-_-)
David, i bet a billion dollars that meter You used in this video IS NOT Sekonic L 308X-U mentioned in caption below video. What is a real model of this flashmeter ????
