\n<\/span><\/strong><\/em>Nope, you\u2019re camera meter is designed to work with continuous light and can\u2019t react fast enough to meter flash. However you can use your cameras LCD to review the photos and adjust the flash power based on what you see. This trial and error approach is OK but does have its drawbacks\u2026 see the video for more on this.<\/p>\n
2 Do all meters work the same? Of course there\u2019s plenty of advanced flash meters around that have features that might make life a lot easier for you. Some meters can measure the amount of ambient contamination in your shot, others can figure out lighting ratios and there\u2019s even some which have pocket wizard radio triggers built into the meter itself.<\/p>\n 3 How do I fire the flash? Other firing options include attaching a PC Sync cable from the flash to the meter or as I previously mentioned, finding a meter that has a built in radio system (such as Pocket Wizard)<\/p>\n 4 Where do I point the meter? One mistake a lot of photographers make is to place the meter in the shadow cast by the chin or by the models hair etc. It\u2019s easy done, so if the meter is telling you something that feels wrong, move the meter and try again.<\/p>\n 5 Do I really need one? A flash meter saves time on a shoot and gives you extra confidence in nailing the correct exposure. However it\u2019s always worth remembering that correct exposure isn\u2019t the same as perfect exposure so it\u2019s a good idea to ignore the meter from time to time and get a little experimental with your shots.<\/p>\n Lastly there\u2019s one more reason for using a flash meter and it has nothing to do with how it works\u2026 Just like shooting with a big camera, the untrained eye can equate using a flash meter to knowing what you\u2019re doing. Now, whether that\u2019s a good or bad thing I\u2019ll leave up to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the very first lighting accessories I brought was a flash meter, in fact the same meter gets used and abused almost every time I use manual flash. I’ve used my handheld flash meter with speedlights and studio flashes\u00a0of all makes, I use it in the studio and on location. Honestly, I couldn’t work … Continue reading 5 Questions about flash meters<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[76,45,23,79,145,36,24,144,3],"class_list":["post-4857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-videos","tag-adorama","tag-camera","tag-featured","tag-flash","tag-lighting","tag-photography","tag-spotlight","tag-studio","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4857"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4862,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857\/revisions\/4862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/em>Well, they all meter the light so at a basic level they\u2019re all the same. In my case I simply set the meter to match my camera\u2019s ISO and shutter speed and when the flash fires I can read off the aperture.<\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/em>That largely depends on the flash meter. On my Sekonic L-308s I prime the meter by pressing a button on the side and then fire the flash by pressing the \u201ctest\u201d button on either the flash or radio trigger.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong><\/em><\/span>This is the question that usually sets off much debate among photographers. For me it\u2019s always\u2026 Point the meter at the light, however as you\u2019ll see in the video, if the light is mostly coming from the camera position, the same exposure is recorded by pointing the meter at either the flash or the camera.<\/p>\n![\"Meter-Before-After\"](\"http:\/\/www.gavtrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Meter-Before-After.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/em><\/strong>No, you can do the trial and error way of working and get very good exposures. However if you move or modify the light you\u2019ll need to do the same work all over again.<\/p>\n