How To Use A Meter?

[harrier09]

Hello,

I am venturing into my first film on 16mm and I'm a little lost about using a light meter. I have read two different ways of metering. One is to point towards your key and expose for that the other pointing towards the camera. Which is the proper way?

Where I am lost is if your keying from the back to motivate lets say soft light from a window and you move to a angle where the camera is shooting into the window (you want that side to expose normal), if you meter for the key light the camera side will be dark but if you meter towards the camera won't the background get to hot? This is in scenes where you won't a low contrast look.

Thanks

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I point the dome at the light I want to read, not towards the camera, which would average key and shadows of the face was side-lit. As you said, if the camera moves around the subject, then the key becomes a side light, front light, back light, etc. so it's better to just read the light by pointing the dome at it.

But then I have to creatively interpret my meter reading. If the face is in intense backlight with just underexposed ambient fill on the face, then I'd probably meter the ambient light hitting the face and then decide how many stops underexposed I think it should be -- one, two, three-stops under, whatever. If the face is half-lit, you may want the lit side to be slightly hotter than normal to compensate for the fact that the shadow side is so dark, as if your eyes were adjusting more and more for the shadow side of the face as the camera moves around into the dark side of the face.

Which is why one of the first tests you shoot is a front-lit face that is exposed over, under, and normal by different stops, printed for the normal face exposure, so you know what one-stop over or under looks like, etc.