Photographic Metering and Motivation
Chapter 1
You are most likely reading this because you are interested in improving your understanding of metering in photography and how this might improve your craft. I too was there and spent many years with a Gossen digital meter making good and bad images with average metering and film cameras. A meter is not essential to getting good results but one is necessary if you want consistent results and especially so as most of my cameras are manual film/analog cameras without any metering capabilities. I worked this way for many years but found I was not getting consistently good or even great results. I set about improving different aspects of my technique a few years ago and metering was one important part of that.
Photography is very technical and unavoidably so. The advent of digital cameras and sophisticated electronics has reduced this but the best photographers mostly all have a good grasp of the technical basics. I believe that having a firm foundation on techniques and concepts allows one to build their creative capabilities.
I am an engineer by training and so perhaps it is no surprise I believe this. I also strive for technically excellent photos, that is ones with ‘proper’ exposure, focus, depth of field, contrast, and composition. This is not universally true of all photographers as exhibited by the Lomography scene with delight in defects of old film and cameras. It seems in the age of ‘perfect’ digital imaging there is a backlash that seeks expression in the flaws. ICM (In Camera Motion) is another example of technically imperfect images having an artful appeal. I am not preaching against these expressions but merely hope to help those that seek better exposures. If nothing more it can become a firm foundation for departure from the technically perfect.
My hope is that my newness to the subject enables me to explain it in a way that is plain and helpful. I practice a form of the zone system that took me too long to understand and I hope I can make it more accessible and relevant as a result.
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Doug Morse
