J. C. O'Connell wrote: > >Weve been down this road before, unless your aiming your camera at a full screen 18% reflectance subject the meter will over or under expose the subject. the only way you could be accurate is if you manually compensated the meter reading based on the KNOWN reflectance of the subject and that is nearly always UNKNOWN.
You could always use an incident meter to remove concerns about the reflectance of the subject. Used correctly, incident meters measure (with a high degree of accuracy) the illumination level at the subject. So one might say that an incident meter reading is the nearest thing to the objective "perfect exposure" that some here appear to be seeking. However, that is not usually the case. The incident meter reading can only inform the photographer, who will make his/her choice of "perfect exposure" by adjusting that reading to take account of his/her wish to retain detail in shadows or highlights. That's partly because most films are incapable of rendering the whole range of contrast of most subjects/scenes, and partly because the definitive incident reading may not provide the precise effect the photographer is trying to achieve. John
