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D7000 Manual Meter off by a full stop?

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I use my flashmeter so infrequently in today's digital age... I had to go and test. My D7000 matches my Sekonic L-518 very nicely. If I use flash lighting, meter at the subject position and transfer the Sekonic reading to my D7000 in manual (totally bypassing the Nikon metering system).... my pics are about 1/6 stop underexposed (determined with a known digital gray card reference). If I cared, I could slightly tweak the Sekonic calibration pot and get a perfect match.... but 1/6 stop can just be the angle the photographer holds the meter!

For 5 cameras to be defective would require 5 bad aperture couplings or 5 bad sensors.... far from likely. I would look for a common variable.

One meter? They do drift in calibration. During the film days (when a meter was terribly important) mine would go in for calibration every other year.

Hoping I'm not being so basic that I'm insulting....... thing do get done differently with new gear..... you are holding the meter at your subjects face (location) and aiming the dome of the meter directly into the lens of the camera (or camera position)?

Again with the real basic..... you are using the dome on your meter, not the "flat" or open position (I don't know your exact meter, you may not have flat or open.... the point is, for typical situations such as humans you want to use the half of a ping-pong ball looking thing).

Again with the real basic..... you do have the meter and camera set to the same ISO?

Once you are close, most Sekonics have a small screw driver "pot" that will adjust the meter to a given camera. Mine was last adjusted to match my Fuji DSLR. Or, you can just (deliberately) mis-match the camera and meter ISO.

Hope that helps, getting 5 or 50 defective cameras would really ruin some-ones day!!!!
--
Tom Ferguson
http://www.ferguson-photo-design.com
 
Photo Coordinator said:
Photo Coordinator said:
So am I to read this that your figuring out exposure with an external meter. > Entering that manually into the camera and the resulting exposure is off by a stop?
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You are correct and the lab is emphasizing the blow out and making the final print look terrible.
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Do you soft proof? Do you have it set so the lab dosnt do any "editing or composition"? Are you looking on a calibrated monitor before sending out the files?
Photo Coordinator said:
Photo Coordinator said:
Or are you using the "in camera meter" to figure out the exposure in manual mode?
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No, I and the photographers have been using Sekonic Flashmate L-308S which worked perfectly with the D80s
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Have you tried to reset the camera to insure no unwantd setup peramaters are getting in the way?
Photo Coordinator said:
Photo Coordinator said:
Have you tested ANY of your other D7000's? Or just the first 5 with consistent > results within that group so far?
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I have used 6 at this point and they all seem to be over exposing if not a full stop at least 2/3s a stop.
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Have you tested exposure in camera, Full Matrix, Center Weighted, and Spot result vs your meter? I assume your taking an incident reading on your Sekonic. Have you compared spot to spot between both meters?
Photo Coordinator said:
Photo Coordinator said:
Help me understand you're testing parameters and if you have had any D7000s that > DID do OK?
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All set ups are supposed to be:
The subject is 6ft (1.8 m) from background

photographer is 6ft (1.8 m) from subject (with reflector slightly in front angled to light)
light is 4ft (1.2 m) to the right or left side of photographer

This results in shooting roughly with 70-105 mm depending on size of subject, f8 @125s
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Some ideas for you....throwing in the last bit....I am not even remotly good with flash, so those peramtiers are out of my area of expertise.

Have you tried not using the meter and working with the CLS system and letting it do its work? I (being the nub of flash that I am) understand that nikon flash system is much better than the other brands and maybe when working with the system, the end result might be better? Just an idea.

Roman
Photo Coordinator said:
--
Troy D
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--

“There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.”
~ Ernst Haas

We are officially live!!!!
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I said what I said at the BOTTOM of the post? :)

Roman
Ben Seese said:
RomanJohnston said:
Have you tested exposure in camera, Full Matrix, Center Weighted, and Spot result vs your meter?
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Roman, even though he hasn't specifically mentioned it, I'm 99.9% sure that Troy is using studio strobes, which the camera cannot meter, in any mode.

--
http://www.benseese.com
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--

“There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.”
~ Ernst Haas

We are officially live!!!!
http://www.commercialfineart.com/
Old Web Site
http://www.pbase.com/romansphotos/
 
Cedarhill said:
. . . I would obtain a neutral grey card and photograph that in spot metering mode to see whether the camera's meter is fuctioning correctly. The original poster hasn't even told us what the subject matter is. As we all know, if the subject is much lighter or much darker than that 18% grey, the meter is going to react accordingly because it doesn't know the difference between light and dark subjects and bright and dim lighting, respectively.
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A nice section of green grass is supposed to meter about the same as an 18% grey card.
 
Tom Ferguson said:
One meter? They do drift in calibration. During the film days (when a meter was terribly important) mine would go in for calibration every other year.
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16 different meters, same model, L-308s. they all seem to be metering the same. I did a test on these a few weeks before getting the new gear.
Tom Ferguson said:
Hoping I'm not being so basic that I'm insulting....... thing do get done differently with new gear..... you are holding the meter at your subjects face (location) and aiming the dome of the meter directly into the lens of the camera (or camera position)?
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Not insulting, thorough question. Meter is right in front of person's face with the dome facing lens
Tom Ferguson said:
you are using the dome on your meter, not the "flat" or open position
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We use the dome "Incident light mode" , I had a photographer mistakenly use the open "Reflected light mode" and that caused the metering to be a few stops off
Tom Ferguson said:
you do have the meter and camera set to the same ISO
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Yes 200 ISO
Tom Ferguson said:
most Sekonics have a small screw driver "pot" that will adjust the meter to a given camera
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The L 308s has limited capabilities
I have some more testing inline for today

--
Troy D
 
Brendan H said:
With a sample of 50 cameras, it would be interesting to see if you have back focus issues. I'm not being facetious...
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Focus has not been an issue with any of the cameras thus far. They are almost (for portraiture) too sharp!

Also the 18-105 VR II lenses in our kits have been a great match up , better than the older 18-135 that we were using with the D80s.

--
Troy D
 
Wellllll......... I'm confused! It does sound like you are doing everything correctly! Incident mode/dome at subjects face aimed into camera position is absolutely correct. If you are running reasonable flat light, that is all you need to do.

If you are running very very high contrast light (one side of face very dark, massive hairlight, massive existing light coming in from side or back), then some experimenting and experience in the EXACT placement of the meter may be needed. That doesn't sound like the setup you are going after.

Now we are stuck with 18 meters being off or 5 cameras being off!?!?!

Ben posted, somewhere earlier in this thread, about the fact that ISO settings/numbers are not as "exact" as we would like them to be. In digital (and film was worst) it isn't unusual for one camera's ISO 200 to be another companies ISO 250 or ISO160 (off by 1/3 stop). But you indicated your error was closer to a full stop..... That "I" haven't seen.

I just checked the adjustment "pot" on my Sekonic. As I said earlier... I use to have a lab adjust this every year or two. Once I went all digital, I would just adjust it to whatever my main camera was. The adjust pot on my Sekonic is absolutely dead center, which I would "assume" to indicate that my D7000 is quite ISO accurate in the ISO 100, ISO 200 range I typically use.

One thought, do you have the same shutter speed set on the camera and meter? If there is significant existing light and your meter is set to 1/250 and your cameras are set to 1/60 you certainly could end up with overexposure.

Last thoughts, you indicated in your original post that the problem was in the prints coming back from your lab. How do the images look on a calibrated monitor (or the uncalibrated camera LCD) before you send them to the lab? Are you sending the lab sRGB files (as opposed to aRGB files)? Color space is typically a saturation and color accuracy issue, not a brightness issue, but worth checking.

Let us know how your tests go, I'm curious!
--
Tom Ferguson
http://www.ferguson-photo-design.com
 
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