 Yo, what up welcome back to another episode of the YouTube show where the dog has more character development than the host Well, I know it and you know it everybody gangsta until they get their film back and it's underexposed That alone will make a grown man break down into tears cursing the heavens above I know because I did it in last week's episode and only just stopped crying this morning I guess what I'm trying to say is a lot of people foolishly requested a video on how I meter from my film photography work So get ready. I'm about to drop a huge dump of information about metering right on the screen in front of you Metering is the reading of the light in a scene and is a very important part of the film photography game It can be the deciding factor of whether your shot is hot garbage or simply great It can be the deciding factor when you print your image and your parents hang it up on the fridge Instead of rolling it up and beating you with it. So yeah, this video is gonna be about how I meter for film I'm definitely not a professional So this video won't be necessarily the technically correct way or the easiest way But it's how I've been doing it all these years and so far it's been working First up you'll need a light meter of some kind a lot of cameras have light meters built into their viewfinders But sometimes they won't be working correctly due to age like how I'm 28 years old and won't work correctly after two Apple Teenies alternatively you can use a light meter on your phone This is the one I use quite a bit and so far so good though The one small thing that I've noticed about this app is that all the money for my checking account disappeared after I downloaded it But it's probably just a coincidence You can also go the more accurate route and purchase a handheld light meter like the one I have here that's a conic l 608 Lastly if you have a digital camera this can also be used to meter if you match the settings on both cameras But we won't be diving into that method because I've never done it before also digital cameras right gang So big brain abstract thinking time when I meter I generally think of a histogram like the one we have here in light room Which displays our images brightness and color information with your images dark slash shadow information here on the left Your mids here in the middle and highlights here on the right There are two popular types of metering spot reflective and incident metering three types if you count randomly guessing Which is what all the pros do 99 percent of the time I'm using spot metering Which is when the light meter reads the light that is reflected off of an object or an area In this case when you get a reading your light meter is telling you the settings You need to use to get your object or area that you metered for to the mid tones on your histogram For example, if I choose to spot meter a reading off this Gorgeous shrek barbie here and read the light reflected off her dress It tells me one eighth of a second at f4 That means if I use these settings on my camera and lens That area on her dress will be exposed to the mid tones of my image with shadows and highlights falling off in either direction from there If I meter for something darker the information on the histogram will shift to the right as we get more information Falling into the mids and highs if I meter for the highlights the darker information in the histogram will shift to the left down into the shadows When there's an abundance of light during the day, I typically try and work towards a bright and airy kind of pastel look I achieve this look by overexposing my color negative film by one or two stops or by 32 stops If you truly aren't afraid of anything in photography a stop is a certain measurement of light In reality, stop is a term used by my co-workers to get me to shut up about how cool I think william verbique and matt day are if someone were to tell you to overexpose your image by one stop What they're essentially telling you is to double the amount of light that's being exposed to your film This can be achieved by changing the shutter speed or the f stop So going from one sixtieth of a second down to one thirtieth of a second or f 5.6 to f4 Those are both examples of going one stop brighter Anyway, when I meter for daytime photos where it's bright, but seems a little brighter because I'm hung over I generally set the light meter to one and a half stops over box speed So if I'm shooting portrait 400 one stop overexposed would be 200 and two stops overexposed would be 100 Because we're straight up lying to the light meter and telling it we're using less sensitive film So we need more light for me one and a half stops It means I'll tell the light meter to read for an iso of 150 Though 160 is generally our closest option, which is fine Next I'll hone my light meter in on the subject or whatever object or area I want to expose to the midtones and take a reading If there's no subject in the scene or I can't find any midtones to meter Then typically I zoom my meter all the way out and take a general reading of the entire scene If I'm using my camera's light meter, I generally just meter the entire scene. Yeah, so pretty simple That's how I meter for daytime photos the same kind of technique can be used for overcast photos where the lighting is a bit more Diffused though generally in those cases I'll only overexpose my film by half of a stop instead of one and a half stops Additionally sunrise or sunset is a good time to shoot because it's free and you get one pretty much every day And it's a good excuse to stare off into the sunset like luke skywalker So how do we get these shots to look fire so that we can appease the sun god Raw or the giant ball of flaming gas in space whatever you believe I guess So here's the scene I shot at sunset with some of my homies The way I meter this high contrast situation is pretty simple Generally, I'll meter for the subject of the image in this case the person and go one stop Maybe even two stops darker from there So let's hypothetically say the meter reading for the light on the guy here was one 60th of a second at f 2.8 I can make the image two stops darker by changing the shutter speed from one 60th of a second to One 250th of a second by making a one or two stops darker I could potentially retain more information from the sunset and not lose too much detail in our subject Additionally, in most cases, I'll shoot sunsets at a half of a stop overexposed So if I was shooting portrait 400, I'd shoot it at 300 iso or 320 since that's more common Honestly though, the best piece of advice I can give you is don't take pieces of bread to your bare nipples and run through a flock of seagulls Oh wait, no, it's for a different video The best piece of advice is simply just bracket your images for sunset Expose some shots with meter readings of the sunset expose some shots with meter readings of the subject And expose some shots with meter readings in between something else to keep in mind Is that most color negative film and black and white film actually have pretty good latitude in the highlights and brights So it's better to overexpose when in doubt This is where the rules of the game change completely So take a big ol sip of that coffee tea water red bull vodka with testosterone powder Whatever it is you're drinking and spit it out in surprise Nightscapes are generally considered high contrast scenes So it can be tough to determine where to take a reading especially since your handheld light meter can fail if it's too dark If this happens the light meter on your phone will do fine as it has better low light capabilities Yay technology Hopefully someday our robot overlords see that I embrace new technology and spare me So probably the most important thing to take into account for nighttime photography is reciprocity failure Which is a term for how light sensitive chemicals on your film lose sensitivity the longer they're exposed to light This is generally something we need to be aware of if we're doing an exposure over one second in any situation However, every film is different. For example on kodak's new ectochrome reciprocity failure doesn't kick in till after 10 seconds You can find individual reciprocity curves for whatever film you're using by asking your boy jeevs for answers So for nighttime work, I generally try to use exposure to create a sense of Isolation and encompassing darkness for the subject because I'm still secretly going through my high school goth phase To get that look I generally shoot at box speed and meter for the brightest parts of the subject Now remember when you meter for something directly like that Your light meter is telling you what settings to use to get that object or area exposed to the mid tones of your image So in the case of this toll booth shot It brought all the highlight information down to the mid tones But it also brought all the shadow information down to the point where any detail around the toll booth was lost If this were an alternate universe where I was Handsome respected by my peers and chose to meter for the shadow information of the image We'd get a fully illuminated scene with lots of detail everywhere and brighter potentially even blown out highlights What I like to do for a lot of nighttime scenes as well is meter for the brightest parts of the subject and then go one Maybe even two stops brighter if I'm feeling real crazy off that late night taco bell Baja blast it just hits a little bit differently at night both going in and baha blasting out So an example of writing the exposure one stop brighter would be if I was shooting the window of a house What's going on in that window or why I've been shooting that specific person? I mean window for the past five months is irrelevant So I meter for the light coming through the window and let's just say it's two second at f 11 on portrait 800 In this case, I'd probably add a stop a light to reveal a tiny bit more shadow information So I could do that by changing the shutter speed from two seconds to four seconds Now reciprocity since our shutter time was over one second We're going to need to account for reciprocity failure for this We're going to assume a reciprocity factor of about 1.35 because when I asked my boy jves He wouldn't tell me portrait 400 has a reciprocity factor of 1.35 815 I think so I think for portrait 800 It's probably a safe guess So our light meter said four seconds at f 11 Let's jump into the calculator on our phone and set four seconds to the power of 1.35 and boom We get about six and a half seconds, which could probably be rounded to seven seconds for a correct exposure So that's about it as demonstrated metering is very important to the final look of your image So it's crucial to understand how it works. This video has been all about how I go about it Which again might not be the best way or the technically proficient way But it's how I've been doing it and it's been working So I hope that this video helped you at least a little bit and maybe you learned something Like how I'm a grown man who owns a Shrek Barbie doll