articles/Landscape/tools-of-the-land-page8

Tool of the Land - Landscape - part 8 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

by Mike McNamee Published 01/08/2015

You have to do your homework with these meters and although they are superbly accurate, they are only as good as the person pointing them. We set both meters up in a viewing booth and obtained an identical reading from both meters of 2s @ f16 for 200 ISO and an incident reading. We then set the camera to these values and made a shot using manual exposure. The delivered Raw file was too light and a correction of 2.3 stops was required to bring the target mid-grey to the aim value of 120 RGB points. This has always been a beef in these parts; intuitively you would expect such a meter reading to be accurate at least for the mid-grey.

The camera profile target which is available as an optional extra is a beautifully made grey patch set in A4 format with a full-coverage 50% grey on one side and patches on the other. It provides an ideal control for both exposure and contrast range. As you might expect, we did check its accuracy. The greys returned a value of 49.8%, within a half point of neutral and with an exceptionally low metamerism. This is why the chart retails at £95, although we did find it on offer for £25.

Model Price L-758 DR £499 L-478 DR £325

If you look at the URL below, it takes you to a video by Mark Cleghorn made at photokina which tells you all about using the L-478 in the studio setting: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvBWgNZwj9Y

Paul Gallagher recently led a field trip on Arran and Kintyre, and we arranged for him to shoot this image of photographer Christine Le Heup at work. It shows much of what we have been discussing: Christine is using the Sirui T-025x lightweight, carbon travel tripod which packs down really small and in the foreground is her F-stop Tilopa bag. Despite the proximity of the summer solstice, we note that she is also wearing a lightweight down jacket which is both stylish and superbly efficient (I have four down jackets! Ed). The prices of these range from around £15 for a down gillet from Costco to a full jacket from Cotswold for up to £200. Using a layering method for clothing, a light down under a quality waterproof will keep you warm and dry all day! Christine's lovely image from Kintyre back towards Lochranza. Arran is shown above.

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• Tool of the Land - Landscape page 2
  
• Tool of the Land - Landscape page 3
  
• Tool of the Land - Landscape page 4
  
• Tool of the Land - Landscape page 5
  
• Tool of the Land - Landscape page 6
  
• Tool of the Land - Landscape page 7
  
• Tool of the Land - Landscape page 8
  

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