Appendix A
Using a Light Meter with Video
If you come from a film background, you probably never leave the house without your trusty Polaris or Sekonic light meter strapped to your hip. Then you enter the world of video, and everything is different. Manufacturers don’t bother to give you an ASA/ISO-equivalent exposure index for the cameras. How inconsiderate! You can’t use a meter without an exposure index (EI, a measure of light sensitivity).
For you folks, I offer two simple procedures to figure out the exposure index of a specific video camera.
The first method uses a photographic gray card. Illuminate the card evenly and zoom in on it so that it fills the entire picture. Make sure the Shutter Speed is Off, which sets the speed to 1/60 ...
Get Lighting for Digital Video and Television, 2nd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
