hand held meter and camera does not agree???

[stradibarrius]

I decided to shoot some slide film in my Nikon F100 I wanted to be careful with the exposure so I took an incident reading with my hand held and also a reading through my F-100 The F100 was 2.5 stops more exposure than my hand held. I went and got my Nikon D300 and it was exactly the same as the hand held so I tried my Nikon F4 and it was the same as my F100...

I know the hand held is right on based on all of the shots I have taken with my RB67 and my 4x5.

Any ideas what may be going on????

[Mackinaw]

Retry your test but this time use your hand-held meter in the reflective mode, not incident. The meters' in your Nikon's are all reflective so this will put all the meters on the same operating level. Find some neutral surface, preferably in the shade, meter away, and see what you get.

Jim B.

[jovo]

If you used the same lens on both the F100 and D300, then the metering is fine based on the amount of coverage of the lens. The incident reading most likely is accounting for a larger area, hence more light.

[MartinP]

With all the devices, try metering off something even in tone, consistently lit and filling the metering area. For example a shaded plain wall, or even the palm of your hand. See what happens when they are all "looking" at exactly the same thing in the same light.

Differences may be due to different matrix-metering in the various Nikons and incident versus handheld results from the lightmeter?

Edit: And as per the post above, use the same lens when metering with each of the Nikons!

[BMbikerider]

Hand held and camera metering very rarely coincide. If you can get a sheet of light grey card and put it in a bright area, but away from direct light. Check the camera meter in the three settings spot centre and matrix, they should all be the same. Then the hand held meter in the same way without casing a shadow on the card and the reading should be very close tho the camera reading.

One thing to mention is the lens used on the camera should be a prime lens not a zoom. Or a zoom lens with a constant apperture. Bear in mind the hand held meter will not have to read the light levels though multiple thicknesses of glass, which, although almost certainly multicoated will reduce the light levels by perhaps up to half a stop.

[E. von Hoegh]

Set the handheld to reflective not incident and check both against a grey card. Did you really expect an incident reading to coincide with a reflected reading?

Also, digital cameras are not calibrated to ISO numbers, don't use one for metering a scene which will be photographed on film - especially transparency film.

[DREW WILEY]

This is why I use the same handheld spotmeter for everything, even if I'm just toting a Nikon.

[benjiboy]

If a reflected light meter reading agrees with an incidental one there's something wrong, because the light falling on a subject can't be the same, as the light reflected off it, they have different paremeters, your comparing apples with bananas.

[TheFlyingCamera]

Ben- not necessarily true- what if the subject happens to have the same reflectance as 18% gray? Then the incident and reflected meter would read the same.

[benjiboy]

Ben- not necessarily true- what if the subject happens to have the same reflectance as 18% gray? Then the incident and reflected meter would read the same.

Not in my experience Scott, I've never seen them agree, It's dark here at the moment, but I'll test this in the morning.