Mark Vargo is a big time cinematographer who has worked on too many well-known movies to list. He’s credited as a second unit director of photography on everything from Deep Impact and The Green Mile to Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Ted. In other words, knows what he’s doing, and now he’s chosen to share some of that knowledge with his fellow photographers and videographers. Read more…
Back in March 2011, we featured an iPhone app that lets you use your iPhone as a makeshift light meter. The app apparently works pretty well, but if you’ve been looking for a fancier solution involving your iPhone, one has finally arrived.
It’s called the Luxi, and is a small clip on accessory that turns your iPhone into a proper light meter.
Read more…
Cell phones have already gone the way of the touchscreen, so why not light meters? Perhaps they will, starting today. Sekonic has just announced a two new light meters that are the world’s first to offer a touchscreen interface. The L-478D and L-478DR both feature a 2.7-inch LCD touchscreen through which settings are changed by tapping or sliding your finger.
Read more…
For those of you amateur photographers out there who like shooting film, sometimes old cameras don’t have the right light meter for getting the correct exposure. Sometimes they are faulty, inaccurate or have no light meter at all! Photographic light meters can be pretty expensive but analog foot-candle meters are cheap because they don’t really have any photography purpose, until now. This guide will show you how to put it to work for photography.
Read more…
Kaufmann’s Posographe is an intricate pocket-sized mechanical calculator invented back in the 1920s. Measuring 13x8cm and filled with tiny scribblings, the device allowed photographers to approximate the exposure values they needed by simply sliding around six small pointers.
Read more…
Here’s a mind-bending video in which someone created the famous checker shadow illusion in real life. The optical illusion takes advantage of the way our brains process lighting and shadows.
As with many so-called illusions, this effect really demonstrates the success rather than the failure of the visual system. The visual system is not very good at being a physical light meter, but that is not its purpose. The important task is to break the image information down into meaningful components, and thereby perceive the nature of the objects in view. [#]
Interesting huh? Our eyes aren’t very good as a light meters, since they’re easily deceived by context.
Read more…
Want to challenge yourself by shooting manually without a light meter? Head on over to eBay and pick up a Johnson “Standard Exposure” Calculator for less than $10. Released in the late 1940s, it’s a simple rotary device that lets you calculate the proper exposure by choosing the current scene, weather, exposure time, and film speed. Find more about these exposure calculators over on photomemorabilia. You can also check out the Exposure-Mat for a printable card that helps calculate exposure too.
(via swissmiss)
Have an older camera that doesn’t have a built-in light meter? Instead of buying an expensive light meter, you can download the Pocket Light Meter app for free if you have an iPhone. What’s more, you can even mount it to your camera’s hot shoe if you don’t mind looking uber-geeky while shooting. Nigel over at phototinker wrote a tutorial for creating the iPhone hot shoe holder shown above.
iPhone hotshoe holder (via Make)
