Basic exposure 39speaker onstage in spotlight is a good example of when this type
of measurement is useful. Generally, a spotlight illuminates the
subject, and surrounding areas are darkened. If your subject is
seated against a large window, the adjacent area, obviously, is
very bright. In these cases, the photographer must stand at the
subject’s position, point the light meter back toward the camera,
and obtain a reading of the light falling onto the subject. The
resulting exposure will properly render the subject and leave
the background totally dark (the stage) or totally blown out (the
bright window). Given the accuracy of in-camera metering, we
use incident metering for only 1 percent of our photography.
Changing the camera’s metering pattern from the default average
setting to a spot meter reading gives us the “poor man’s” equiva-
lent to a handheld incident light meter. The spot meter will
measure the light refl ected from a very small portion of the
scene, mimicking the incident meter.
This scene of Colorado Governor Bill Ritter at a speaking engagement
was metered in two ways. Arriving before the audience or the governor,
it was possible to go onstage and take an incident reading with a hand-
held meter. Once a speaker stepped to the podium, Barry used the in-
camera meter, set to center averaging, to obtain a second reading. In
this case, the two readings were close to one another. Barry opted to set
the camera on Manual and use the reading from the handheld meter.
This ensured that all of the photographs of the governor had good expo-
sure on him, disregarding the background of black drapes and the corner
of the white banner. Had the in-camera meter been used in either Aper-
ture or Shutter Priority mode, exposures would change as the lens was
zoomed to different focal lengths or as the governor moved around
behind the podium. © 2007 Barry Staver.