Master your hand-held light meter in digital photography with this beginner-friendly course. Enhance your skills and take complete control over your exposures.
This free course teaches beginners how to use hand-held light meters in digital photography. It covers the basics of light measurement, the distinction between reflected and ambient light, and offers practical exercises and resources to strengthen your skills.
How to use your hand-held light meter in digital photography. Specifically created for beginners.
NOTE: this class is given freely to all photographers who want to know how to use their light meter in digital photography... it is simply produced and is more informational than glossy. It will be continuously updated when new materials become available.
This course is designed for those photographers who have just begun using a hand held light meter or who may not know what to do with their meters. or why they are important and useful tools for making images.
The light meter is a device that measures the intensity of light, whether that light is being reflected from a subject (reflected light) or falling upon the subject (ambient or "incident" light). The light meter is a tool that helps a photographer create more accuracy in exposures.
We take a very close look at all the ways a light meter can help a photographer develop a stronger understanding of the light, as well as learning how the different tonalities are expressed through a light meter.
Real world examples and some simple and fun exercises will help the beginning light meter user develop good habits, and stronger lighting.
From reflected light readings to "placing the exposure" for maximum artistic presentation to using the ambient dome for flash in studio, this course is a simple to follow discussion of meters.
NOTE: We do not discuss the operation of any specific (Brand) kind of meters. You will still be required to read your manual to find out how to set your specific meter up, and the specific ways it works. But all meters DO the basic same things, and that is what we discuss on this course.
We use video and a few PDF's to show how to use a light meter in both reflective and ambient modes. There are three exercises to be done by the student that will help them learn their specific meter.
The course should be done in order, and there is over 2 hours of video content as well as PDF documents for your files.
If you are ready to learn to use a meter, to take control of your exposure this course is for you. Many photographers will tell you that 'chimping' is all you need to do. I disagree... there are far more reasons to use a light meter than merely exposure... and we will discuss them in this class.
The class is free... enjoy and keep shooting.
Thank you,
Don Giannatti
In this course you will learn the difference between reflective light meters and ambient light meters
Students will learn which meter is best for different situations
We will discover the powerful ways a light meter can help a photographer pre-visualize the image before exposure
17 Lectures
Don Giannatti has been a photographer for more than four decades. Starting with a desire to do fine art photography, he quickly made the jump into commercial. Over the decades he has owned studios in Phoenix, New York, Chicago and LA. A wide range of clients kept him shooting everything from studio product to fashion, beauty and travel.With a preference...
Easy to understand the importance of having a light meter
Good explanations on how to find the correct setting for taking that perfect picture time after time as you never know but that picture may not be vailable again.
I really appreciate this course thus far. Don is taking complex subject matter and making it easy to be understood. I look forward to completing this course and several other of his work.
I thought this course would largely be a refresher type of course for me but I'm learning more than I thought, some new understanding gained, particularly about learning to see the scene/image in tones of mid-greys, darks and brightness and as a basis for me to decide where to look for/set mid-grey or make the shot brighter or darker using spot metering. Very enlightening elements to this course.
Very helpful in understanding how to use a light meter and also very useful presentations of images and lighting to illustrate workflow using ambient light and flash. Thank you for an informative course which has provided me with a good basis for taking time to practice the better understanding I've gained.
Was interested in knowing what the benefits of a light meter was, how to use and whether it would be useful for my photography.... it helped to clarify that....
Very good course. Explains all the details of using light meter in variety of situations. Great work that too for free..
Excellent explanation on using the light meter and tones. A different way to think about exposures. Very useful course!
Ja, de cursus voldeed ruimschoots aan mijn verwachtingen. Ondanks het feit dat ik al verschillende jaren fotografeer en al heel wat over het meten van het licht wist heb ik toch weer enkele dingen bijgeleerd. Vooral over het gebruik van de spotmeter als tool om je belichting zo af te stemmen zoals je het zelf previsualiseerd.
I' ve learned a lot about using my reflective and ambient light meters from this course. I liked the pacing and content of this course.
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James D.
Trying to learn about photography and what may make pictures 'pop'. Appreciate the start of this course expressing our needs to include a light meter as a teaching tool. Thank you.