A hand-held light meter measures the light that is hitting the subject of an image, as opposed to a meter in a camera, which measures the average of the complete scene. It can therefore help a photographer get a final image where the subject of the picture does not look too dark or light. This page is a guide on how to use a light meter.

A hand-held light meter measures the light that is hitting the subject of an image, as opposed to a meter in a camera, which measures the average of the complete scene. It can therefore help a photographer get a final image where the subject of the picture does not look too dark or light. This page is a guide on how to use a light meter.

• There are two types of light meters, a light meter inside a camera and a hand-held, external light meter. For many pictures, a camera light meter is adequate and can often provide great results. A hand held meter do offer certain benefits, however, because it measures light reaching a subject or reflecting off a subject instead of the average light in the complete scene viewed in the frame.

(Creative Commons photo by geishaboy500)

• Camera light meters measure the average light of the scene in its frame. This can provide a great result for a picture when the scene has a variety of brightness levels. It's not very useful when taking pictures of a very light scene, for example snow, or a very dark scene, such as black clothes. Pictures like this often come out with little detail unless you use a hand-held light meter.

• To use a hand-held light meter correctly, you need to be familiar with basic camera settings, especially apertures and shutter speed.

1. The aperture is the opening where light comes through the camera and reaches the film. A small aperture is actually a large number, such as 22.
2. Shutter speed is the amount of time during which light reaches the film. It is written in fractions, for example 1/60 (sometimes written as 60 on the camera) means 1/60 of a second.

• Using a light meter requires you to turn off the automatic settings on a camera and choose aperture and shutter speed yourself, something the camera does when it is on a automatic setting.

1. Hold the light meter up against the subject to get a reading of which aperture and shutter speed to use.
2. When the meter is facing the subject, you get a reflected reading, which measures the light reflecting off the subject. When the meter is facing away from the subject, you get an incident measurement of the light falling on the subject.

• After you use the light meter to determine an aperture and shutter speed, you will need to change both these settings on the camera. For more information on this, consult Mahalo's pages on How to Change Aperture on a Camera and How to Change Shutter Speed on a Camera.

• Use a light meter when the image in the frame of the camera do not have a variety of brightness and contrast levels, for example when taking pictures of black or white items. Learn about apertures and shutter speeds before starting to use the meter, and change these according to the recommendations of the meter.

•