I have a minor observation for your modification: I think you could include on the same scale of EV, another one with a different colour, showing the f number (e.g from 1.2 to 22) for a standard case e.g. Standard films have a recording capacity of 50-150 lines/mm which is a superior resolution compared to 10Mb digital cameras (see my instructable on digitizing negatives) and the possibility of a smouth rendering of grey values due to the diffusion of Ag reaction. Steps to take a measurement Place or hold the meter in the same lighting as the subject Read the EV value off the meter Slide the Exposure Calculator so the ISO film speed of your film points to the EV value you read Read the Aperture/Shutter Speed values off the bottom of the Exposure Calculator Set your camera to these values Shoot! See the pictures below for the results! Although I turned to digital photography I always appreciate a retro look to film technology. This tool converts the EV reading to a shutter/aperture combination. To make use of the meter you also need an exposure calculator (which is a wonderful tool made by Andrew Lawn.
If you happen to have found the same light meter as me (GE 214) you can print out the attached PDF and use my template, it is correctly scaled for printing on 8.5x11 paper. I recommend using a program that allows layering images so the old scale and new scale pictures don't become mangled together.
Use your favorite drawing software to make a new scale, drawing on top of the old one. Just read the FC value for each EV value and draw lines and numbers on the old meter back-plate to indicate the new EV values.
Sekonic is a light meter manufacturer who has kindly put a conversion chart on their website to use in converting the values from foot-candle to EV. Ronal The Barbarian English Subtitles Download.
There is also a small metal grate that can be placed over the cell to drop its sensitivity by 10x so that full daylight can be metered as well. The FC meter I used was a General Electric Type 214 foot-candle meter, it has 3 ranges controlled by a switch on the right side, and a plastic-covered selenium cell on top. You can meter once and keep taking pictures until the subject lighting changes for whatever reason. In some cases you need to be close to the subject to subject the meter to the same lighting, but in a lot of cases like outside, if the subject is in the sun, and your meter is in the sun, the lighting is the same no matter where you are. Foot-candle meters read the amount of light striking a surface by having their selenium cell subjected to the same light as the photographic subject is subjected to. It takes all the guesswork out of using a paper exposure calculator which is great for beginners.
Paper exposure calculators work on the principle of manually identifying an exposure value based on the description and then aligning the EV scale with your film sensitivity to deduce shutter speed/aperture combinations for your camera.įC and EV are directly related, so modifying the meter back-panel is all that is required to turn a FC meter into an EV meter, and it works great.
Foot-candles are a unit of light that can be directly correlated to Exposure Values (EV) which are a list of simplified amounts of light and are often referenced to possible scenarios which you might find this amount of light in.
Tthis guide will show you how to put it to work for photography. 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. 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. If you like my work, please vote for this Instructable in the Make It Real Challenge before June 4th, 2012.