# Selecting a metering method



## FLCKeats (Apr 11, 2017)

Good afternoon everyone,

I'm posting this in the film thread, because I shoot film (B&W). I know it's applicable to digital photography, but I've found film photographers tend to have slightly different ideas of methodology. I would welcome insight from anyone, though.

I've been feeling overwhelmed with all the different metering concepts. Not so much the matrix/center/spot concept, but the following:

1. Reflective metering.
2. Incident metering.
3. Using a grey-card.
4. Using the zone system via spot metering.

How the heck do you choose with "method" to use? 

In my experience, they all come out slightly different. Close, but usually different within a stop or two.

If someone could compartmentalize this a bit for a novice sake, that'd be awesome.

Thank you!


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## smoke665 (Apr 11, 2017)

You left off #5 - Take your best guess!! LOL

Here's a good read to explain the difference in Reflected, incident and how that applies to a neutral gray card.

Metering Techniques - Incident Metering - Reflective Metering

Pay special attention to the part about how different things can fool your camera reflected light meter.


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## 480sparky (Apr 11, 2017)

There is,no one-size-fits-all merhod. You need to match your subject, your lighting,  your gear,  your developing and printing methods along with your desired results to choose the one that best fits the circumstances and your chosen outcome.


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## Vtec44 (Apr 11, 2017)

For film, I tend to pay attention to shadows more and lean toward the over exposure side as a precaution (which is opposite than digital).  I shoot mostly Portra 160, 400, and Fuji Pro 400H.  How much to over expose depends on the film stock.  We have to deal with color shifts in color film so about 2-3 stops is where my ideal over exposure is.  I mainly meter for the shadow, reflective metering at on the darkest spot of the scene.  For portraits, it's typically under the person's chin.  Then, I over expose it about 1.5 stops on the camera.

I use the Zone system when I can't get close to the subject to use my handheld meter.  For digital, I lean toward the under exposure side.  For film, I lean toward the overexposure side.

I find that incident metering works better for digital, as it accounts for all bounced light.  One bright light source can ruin the average which would cause you to under expose.  For digital, this is not a problem.  For film, you don't want to under expose unless you want to go for that muddy moody looks.


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## KmH (Apr 11, 2017)

Yep.
Shooting film we concern ourselves with the shadows regards exposure.
Shooting digital we concern ourselves with the highlights regards exposure.

Incident light needs to be measured with a hand-held light meter, because in-the-camera light meters measure reflected light.

A gray card is used to aid setting digital white balance as an initial step in digital image post production.


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## FLCKeats (Apr 11, 2017)

Thanks for your responses.

I think I should have maybe been more specific. I understand, for the most part, how the different metering options work.

However, I'm trying to differentiate situations in which one would use a specific method. For example: I have "X" scene. Do I choose to meter a gray card, or do I choose to use the zone system? What kind of factors am I looking at to make these decisions? Indoor? Outdoor? Contrast? How do I evaluate a scene to select a metering option and what am I looking for?

Thanks!


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## FLCKeats (Apr 11, 2017)

Hey, thank you.

Don't you have to get close enough to an object to spot meter in order to use the zone system? (With a film camera.)



Vtec44 said:


> For film, I tend to pay attention to shadows more and lean toward the over exposure side as a precaution (which is opposite than digital).  I shoot mostly Portra 160, 400, and Fuji Pro 400H.  How much to over expose depends on the film stock.  We have to deal with color shifts in color film so about 2-3 stops is where my ideal over exposure is.  I mainly meter for the shadow, reflective metering at on the darkest spot of the scene.  For portraits, it's typically under the person's chin.  Then, I over expose it about 1.5 stops on the camera.
> 
> I use the Zone system when I can't get close to the subject to use my handheld meter.  For digital, I lean toward the under exposure side.  For film, I lean toward the overexposure side.
> 
> I find that incident metering works better for digital, as it accounts for all bounced light.  One bright light source can ruin the average which would cause you to under expose.  For digital, this is not a problem.  For film, you don't want to under expose unless you want to go for that muddy moody looks.


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## FLCKeats (Apr 11, 2017)

smoke665 said:


> You left off #5 - Take your best guess!! LOL
> 
> Here's a good read to explain the difference in Reflected, incident and how that applies to a neutral gray card.
> 
> ...




Bookmarked. Thank you!


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## FLCKeats (Apr 11, 2017)

480sparky said:


> There is,no one-size-fits-all merhod. You need to match your subject, your lighting,  your gear,  your developing and printing methods along with your desired results to choose the one that best fits the circumstances and your chosen outcome.



That's what I was afraid of. Lol.


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## FLCKeats (Apr 11, 2017)

KmH said:


> Yep.
> Shooting film we concern ourselves with the shadows regards exposure.
> Shooting digital we concern ourselves with the highlights regards exposure.
> 
> ...



Thank you!


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## Derrel (Apr 11, 2017)

The in camera meter might do a pretty good job for you. What camera and lens do you have?


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## FLCKeats (Apr 11, 2017)

Canon AE-1 Program Standard 50 mm 1.8.


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## Vtec44 (Apr 11, 2017)

FLCKeats said:


> Hey, thank you.
> 
> Don't you have to get close enough to an object to spot meter in order to use the zone system? (With a film camera.)



I have a Pentax 645nii and a Nikon F100.  Both are have really good internal metering system.  When I use  the Zone system, I will guess the zone of the object that I'm using to meter with, then put the object in that zone, then over expose at least 1 stop.  By doing that, no I don't need to get close to my subject, compare to a handheld meter, as long as the in camera meter can read it.


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## Ysarex (Apr 11, 2017)

FLCKeats said:


> Good afternoon everyone,
> 
> I'm posting this in the film thread, because I shoot film (B&W). I know it's applicable to digital photography, but I've found film photographers tend to have slightly different ideas of methodology. I would welcome insight from anyone, though.
> 
> ...



Let's see here. I'm going to take your list backwards.

4. Are you doing your own darkroom work -- your own film processing and printing? If not then you can't use the Zone System. Few aspects of photography are as misunderstood as the Zone System. Integral and fundamental to the Zone System is the variable gamma performance of film over development time. If you haven't tested the film you're using and aren't processing that film at different times to manipulate it's gamma output in response to exposure and then likewise manipulating the printing process then you're not using the Zone System and you really can't. I'm going to make an assumption here that you're not doing that because you wouldn't have otherwise asked this question. So you can strike #4 off your list as: you've encountered misinformed fauxtogs spewing nonsense.

4a. Spot metering: Spot metering is a good way to go but it requires auxiliary support. Let's take auxiliary support and save that as a topic to treat after we work further through the list.

3. Using a grey card for metering is a way to try and get a reflective meter to mimic the performance of an incident meter. You could also think of it as a way to carry around your own spot to use use for spot metering. It does have that element of consistency when used to replace spot metering but unfortunately it will likewise require auxiliary support.

2. Incident metering: The whole point and advantage of incident metering is that you're measuring the light intensity from the source before it has been altered by the reflective properties of the subject. There's a real appeal to that. By cutting out the change in light intensity that the subject causes you can look forward to increased consistency. When using an incident meter what you're doing is determining the exposure that correctly places a diffuse highlight, setting that exposure and then assuming everything else will fall into place. The trick with an incident meter has to do with my use of the verb "assuming" in the last sentence. It's a fair assumption some of the time until it's not at which point you're going to need auxiliary support.

1. Reflective metering: Here you're measuring the light reflecting back from the subject. Given that different subjects have different reflectance rates (white painted house versus dark brown brick house) this begs the question, how does the camera meter know the difference? And the answer of course is it doesn't. So then how do we know if a reflective meter reading is accurate? And the answer is we don't. So guess what we're going to need: auxiliary support.

Here's a couple photos that illustrate the reflected light issue:







I saw the two cars parked together across my street and grabbed my camera because it was a good illustration to use for class. I took the photo of the two cars together -- one silver and one charcoal. The exposure is good for both. Then I moved in close and took the silver car door panel and then the charcoal car door panel. Those photos are side by side in the bottom of the illustration. You can see that the meter darkened the silver car door panel and lightened the charcoal car door panel. Unable to discriminate that something is actually lighter or darker, that's how a meter works.

An incident meter would have given me very close to the same exposure I used for the photo of the two cars. The diffuse highlight is well placed using my camera's reflected meter.

Auxiliary support: Let's look at a problem photo that will introduce "auxiliary support."






That's J. B. Kleinpeter pushing a load of coal up river past one of my favorite fishing spots. I only had a pocket camera with me that used a reflected meter. I took the top photo and when I did I brought in auxiliary support. I said to myself, "got a white painted tow in direct sun making up at best 20% of the frame area in an otherwise normal but high contrast (sidelit) landscape. If I let the camera's meter set the exposure it'll nuke the diffuse highlights." I then intervened and reduced the exposure 2/3 stop. And sure enough you can see that the top photo is too dark and appears underexposed. I did that. That was better than what the camera would have done (middle frame) blowing the highlights. I had two choices: 1. bad and 2. worse. I picked bad knowing I could effect a repair whereas worse would have been a basket case. The bottom frame is my repair of the top photo.

Would an incident meter have given me a correct exposure? In this scene was there a correct exposure? In fact an incident meter would have given me very close to the top photo. Because an incident meter is designed to give you the exposure that places the diffuse highlight it will tend to give you photos that appear underexposed in very high contrast light. The one advantage in a case like this is that the incident meter would have given me bad whereas the reflected meter would have given me worse. Does it matter if I understand what to do in both cases? You and me, we're auxiliary support.

Let's bring back the Zone System for a minute. The Zone System photographer would begin by measuring the scene dynamic range. Neat trick there: they're slow but that tow is moving. So our Zone System photographer is going to have to be blisteringly fast. Their calculations would have told them the scene contrast range was high and that they would have to compress it by reducing the film gamma in processing. They would expose to brighten the image over what I did but hold the diffuse highlights with that pulled film processing. Then in the darkroom they're likely to need a higher grade paper. The Zone System was designed in the first place as a way to accommodate lighting conditions that pushed on limits. It's auxiliary support that includes messing with the chemistry. You're not messing with the chemistry right?

So reflected, which includes spot, and incident. If you go spot you need to pick the right spot and that still doesn't tell you what kind of lighting contrast you're dealing with (neither do reflected or incident). So no matter which way you go you're going to need auxiliary support. Auxiliary support is you learning to see the light and along with understanding how your hardware works *(because you've tested it!)* make the call. No matter which way you go you're going to need auxiliary support. In other words you have a skill to learn. Now lets make that as easy as possible: Don't confuse yourself with too much variability. Pick the most convenient metering method (reflected most likely) and learn that skill. You'll get there faster by concentrating on mastering that skill without variation or distraction.

Joe


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## Derrel (Apr 11, 2017)

Learn how to use the AE1 Program and it's built-in meter. It's a good shooter.


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## compur (Apr 11, 2017)

Unless you're shooting large format and doing your own processing and wet darkroom printing I would forget about the zone system.

The most foolproof method in my opinion is incident metering, that is, measuring the light that is falling on your subject with a hand held meter.

In-camera meters are reflective meters and are subject to being fooled by such things are back-lighting, unusually light or dark areas, bright skies, glare, etc BUT if you are aware of these pitfalls you can usually compensate for them and the convenience of having the meter built into the camera makes it a good choice most of the time. Some in-camera meters are quite sophisticated, especially those in the higher end auto focus film cameras and can automatically do a lot of that compensation for you. 

Another good choice in my opinion is no metering at all -- what is called the "sunny 16 rule." If you are outdoors walking about in day light then this method not only works fine with B&W film but trains you to judge lighting situations without the need of a meter.


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## dxqcanada (Apr 11, 2017)

FLCKeats said:


> Thanks for your responses.
> 
> I think I should have maybe been more specific. I understand, for the most part, how the different metering options work.
> 
> ...



Hmm, you really brought me back to the old'n days.

I used to use a grey card with a reflective light meter (like what's in your camera) to get a general measurement of exposure ... though mostly in studio, or if I was really close to my subject ... problem with using a grey card in the field is carrying it around (I did have a small 4x4 inch card in my camera bag).
I started with using the reflective meter in-camera ... then bought a hand held light meter, used the incident metering, when shooting manual and can't be bothered to meter everything. 
Zone System ... hmm, only do that when you have individual control over the processing of a single frame. If you are shooting large format ... go for it ... otherwise, don't bother.
In the end (of my film days ... hmm, still have film in my fridge, so not so over) I just use the in camera spot meter of my Canon F-1N, and use my brain.


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## Derrel (Apr 11, 2017)

With color negative film, you want to expose adequately for the shadowed areas. Color negative film handles over-exposure reasonably well. Same with B&W negative film: you want a decent shadow exposure, and B&W negative film has a delightful "roll-off" of the highlight areas as they go from well-exposed to _definitively over-exposed_.

Color slide film and digitial need to have their highlight exposures set: they are very sensitive to over-exposure of highlights, so with color slide film and digital color, we tend to meter the highlighted areas, and make SURE we do NOT over-expose them too much.

The Canon AE-1 Program was a camera I used in high school. It has a relatively good in-camera exposure meter. It's going to give you an exposure setting that will "average" an entire scene that is light-metered through the 50mm lens as an *18% gray* "average" exposure.

If you can get the camera CLOSE to a single-toned object, what the light meter recommends will be in effect _a close-up reading_; this is often hard to do, to get close-up to a single subject, and when doing so, one has to make sure not to block the prevailing light, nor allow one's own shadow to influence the light that is being metered. Sounds basic, but metering things that happen to be dimmed by your own shadow is a common mistake when doing a close-up meter reading!

For negatives: you need to ADD _light_ to make it _WHITE_.   And you want to _subtract_ to make it _black. _(Think of this as a silly, dumb poem mnemonic device.)

White snow outdoors with a reflected light meter needs about 1.5 to 1.7 stops MORE light, to make the snow white, and not the meter's average of 18% gray-colored snow.

A large dumptruck pile's worth of black coal needs a MINUS exposure value of about Minus 1.5 to 1.7 EV to make the coal pile render as black, and not the meter's average idea of 18% gray.

You can meter the palm of your own hand, and open up about 1 stop, and that's similar to metering a gray card, and is a sort of crude, old-time way to imitate an incident light meter reading.


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## Gary A. (Apr 11, 2017)

I stated reading all this ... and I'm thinking where does one start.  Your question(s) are not trivial.  There isn't any simple answer, like ... in the mornings use reflective, afternoons use incident, dawn and dusk use spot, et cetera. Rhetorically speaking: What does it mean to expose for the shadows ... what does it mean to expose for the highlights ... how much overexposure does one give to shadows ... et cetera????

I strongly suggest you get a solid foundation of metering and exposure.  Once armed with this knowledge you'll know when, how and why to use which meter. I don't think you'll be able to find in this, or any thread, complete answers to your questions.

Read, read, read, experiment and if you can, take a class or two in film photography.  I am a fan of the Zone System and Ansel Adams and Adams' book, The Negative, while somewhat advanced, but it is still good reading.


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## limr (Apr 11, 2017)

compur said:


> Another good choice in my opinion is no metering at all -- what is called the "sunny 16 rule." If you are outdoors walking about in day light then this method not only works fine with B&W film but trains you to judge lighting situations without the need of a meter.



Sunny 16 works for me. I do use a meter app on my phone to take some general measurements (highlights, shadows, reflections...) but don't meter for every shot.


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## pgriz (Apr 11, 2017)

I used to shoot a lot of slide film which has less latitude than negative film.  My go-to was a Luna Gossen handheld meter (like this one: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/images/images1000x1000/gossen_luna_pro_gray_analog_801009583.jpg)

The starting point was to know how much direct light I had to work with.  Then I'd incident-meter the shadows to see how many stops the shadows were below that of the direct light.  That would give be the basic exposure range I had to work with.  Since slide film had a rather narrow latitude (about 5-6 stops I think), I had to make sure that the exposure of the overall scene was going to fit into that range.  Negative film has a wider range (8-9 stops, and some can achieve up to 12 stops with very careful processing).   Coming back to the slide film, if a highlight was more than three stops over the incident light reading, I would know that it would be blown (as Derrel noted a post or so earlier), so I'd adjust the exposure accordingly (underexpose by about 1 stop to be sure the highlights were not blown).  That said, like @limr, I'd figure out the overall exposure, set it manually, and then use it until the light situation changed or if the scene tonality became quite different.  By doing the exposure this way, I would have a consistent set of images taken at the same time, so we didn't have one image overexposed because the main subject was dark, and the next one underexposed because the subject was very light.


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## FLCKeats (Apr 11, 2017)

This makes a lot of sense.

Would you consider that a concept of the zone system, or just a basic photography technique?



pgriz said:


> I used to shoot a lot of slide film which has less latitude than negative film.  My go-to was a Luna Gossen handheld meter (like this one: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/images/images1000x1000/gossen_luna_pro_gray_analog_801009583.jpg)
> 
> The starting point was to know how much direct light I had to work with.  Then I'd incident-meter the shadows to see how many stops the shadows were below that of the direct light.  That would give be the basic exposure range I had to work with.  Since slide film had a rather narrow latitude (about 5-6 stops I think), I had to make sure that the exposure of the overall scene was going to fit into that range.  Negative film has a wider range (8-9 stops, and some can achieve up to 12 stops with very careful processing).   Coming back to the slide film, if a highlight was more than three stops over the incident light reading, I would know that it would be blown (as Derrel noted a post or so earlier), so I'd adjust the exposure accordingly (underexpose by about 1 stop to be sure the highlights were not blown).  That said, like @limr, I'd figure out the overall exposure, set it manually, and then use it until the light situation changed or if the scene tonality became quite different.  By doing the exposure this way, I would have a consistent set of images taken at the same time, so we didn't have one image overexposed because the main subject was dark, and the next one underexposed because the subject was very light.


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## pgriz (Apr 11, 2017)

I have used a zone system, but generally, the zone system is used with negatives and prints, and what I needed to do was adjust my metering to the latitude of the material I was working with (which was 5-6 latitude slide film).  Here's what I suggest:  meter the highlights you want to have detail in, meter the shadows, and meter the overall incident light you have to work with.  Let's assume you have highlights metered at 1/2000 at f/8, and the shadows at 1/15 at f/8.  That's 7 stops of latitude.  Let's say your incident reading was 1/500 at f/8.   So you have 2 stops above, and 5 stops below.  If you're using a negative film, it should handle both ends quite handily with a basic exposure set at the incident meter reading.  If you were using slide film, you'd lose the deep shadows.  So with slides, you'd need to decide which was more important - preserving the detail in the highlights, or the shadows.  If it was the shadows, you'd probably have to overexpose by 1-1-1/2 stops to pull the shadows into enough exposure to get the detail (but knowing you'll have blown highlights).  

One thing you can try is to calibrate your film by doing a series of shots of an "average" scene starting with (say) 8 stops below incident, and finishing 4-5 stops above incident.  Examine the resulting images to get a feeling for what each stop of exposure revealed to you.  Once you've calibrated your film in this manner, you can then decide how to bias your exposure to get the maximum amount of detail.


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## Ysarex (Apr 12, 2017)

pgriz said:


> .....One thing you can try is to calibrate your film by doing a series of shots of an "average" scene starting with (say) 8 stops below incident, and finishing 4-5 stops above incident.  Examine the resulting images to get a feeling for what each stop of exposure revealed to you.  Once you've calibrated your film in this manner, you can then decide how to bias your exposure to get the maximum amount of detail.



Now here's a man after my own heart. I'm having one of those "getting old" moments and you've made me feel a little better just now. A critical component to learning and understanding is testing -- constant, methodical and careful testing. Did the current generation miss that? What's the testing methodology?

The OP noted B&W negative film in her original post. But an excellent way to test a light meter is to expose a roll of transparency film. That obviates the added difficulty of trying to assess negatives as a testing procedure.

Joe


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## pgriz (Apr 12, 2017)

"Testing" is not a process that comes naturally for many (maybe even most) people.  Unless one has had some exposure during school or work to the necessity of testing or calibrating equipment and materials, it is not obvious why this is useful.  On the other hand, few processes give you the learning potential and a deep knowledge of how your equipment and materials will behave.


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## gsgary (Apr 12, 2017)

FLCKeats said:


> Good afternoon everyone,
> 
> I'm posting this in the film thread, because I shoot film (B&W). I know it's applicable to digital photography, but I've found film photographers tend to have slightly different ideas of methodology. I would welcome insight from anyone, though.
> 
> ...


Metering for film is not like metering for digital, in B+W film meter for the shadow develope for the highlights


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## gsgary (Apr 12, 2017)

FLCKeats said:


> Thanks for your responses.
> 
> I think I should have maybe been more specific. I understand, for the most part, how the different metering options work.
> 
> ...


Don't worry about zone system unless you are developing and wet printing


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## Optimum Clarity (Apr 12, 2017)

FLCKeats said:


> Good afternoon everyone,
> 
> I'm posting this in the film thread, because I shoot film (B&W). I know it's applicable to digital photography, but I've found film photographers tend to have slightly different ideas of methodology. I would welcome insight from anyone, though.
> 
> ...


I didn't bother reading the other replies since this is a reply to the OP so it may have been mentioned, but the method used will change as the conditions and surrounding change. It's tough to use a gray card in the woods in the evening to catch a deer in a clearing as the light is quickly changing.
It makes no sense to use incident to shoot a backlit subject against the sun.
Do a search on using various metering techniques and you will learn a lot.


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## Dave Colangelo (Apr 25, 2017)

I skimmed most of the replies here and generally agree but all things considered I will offer the most common answer... 

_It Depends...
_
But I will elaborate based on my experience and chosen method. There are factors like film type, camera type, available meters etc but ill speak generally. FWIW there is no right answer to this question, each method has its pro's and cons and its better to use the method that best suits the situation than one method over all. 

1. Reflective metering: This is my most used mode by far when shooting film. If the camera has an in body meter its what you are using and it generally works well. On another hand this can sometimes be the only practical method available to you. Generally when shooting landscapes incident metering on a mountain 1000 yards away is impractical. There is of course a bit of guess work here. Lets say you are shooting a landscape that has a very bright sky and a very dark mountain face. If you frame it such that the sky composes 70% of the image, and meter as such, the mountain will likely come out dark and the sky properly exposed. Here must think a bit in the zone mentality with only a single reflective measure. It should also be noted that Through The Lens Meters (TTL) in film cameras may be biased. For example Nikon film cameras (think F3 era) had very heavy center weighting on their meters. Its worth knowing how your in body meter works before practically using it.   

2. Incident metering: I use this when shooting portraits, or things close enough to walk over to them and take a good incident reading. I would say its a bit more accurate but that may be due to the fact there is less guess work in it for me. I usually take a few readings depending on the lighting of the subject and the way the shadows fall.  

3. Using a grey-card: have not really messed with this much so I wont comment. 

4. Using the zone system via spot metering: First off to really make this work you need a spot meter, a good hand held one can be pricey to say the least but in body ones can be nice. I use this mode in the body (if its available) when the lighting is all over the place and I want a particular thing properly exposed. I also use it a bit when doing medium and large format landscape work and really have time to think about the zone system. This is good if you have the time to really compose, meter and take the shot, which, in reality is not always the case. Some will say this yields the best results and I will generally agree with that. But as many have mentioned with out really working in the darkroom later (or in Photoshop) this method may leave a lot on the table.   

Regards 
Dave


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