We all know about photography and its miracles. If we look around us than from a little brochure to a big city billboards everything is depending upon this art "photography". As the name indicates photography is an art of storing images by the effect of light on a thin light sensitive film. In other words it is a graphical presentation of images captured. The art of photography emerged from France. In previous days cameras used for photography were meant to cast image on a thin silver halide film but nowadays it is done by a magnetic or electronic memory containing camera. The image casting on a medium is formed by entering a light from object passing by a lens of camera.
The basic phenomenon for a good photographer is lighting as photography is dependent on light. Photographer has to deal with light entering lens. For this purpose there is always a shutter that controls the beam of light, so that lens can adjust it to cast image sharply focused on the medium.
In previous days there were only 1-2 lenses containing cameras but now a commercial camera comprises of 3-5 lenses to take an image with all its beauty captured.
Professional photographers mostly use meters to adjust the measurement of exposure and keep it at a medium tone. In modern cameras lighting and meters both are adjusted by aperture that is light metering device. Considering light and meters commercial photographer use different metering modes to control the exposure according to light as there are different intensities of light used for photography. These images taken will not have undesired highlights and shadows.
There are different kinds of metering modes such as:
- Spot metering
- Centre weighted average metering
- Average metering
- Partial metering
- Multi-zone metering
Spot meter is widely used light meter. It is used to capture only a small area just between 1-5% of viewing frame. It is also said that it captures the centre of scene having medium tone. Spot meter is based upon the light reflecting principal to capture a small area that is in a very tight cone. Spot meter was very creative invention and it helped photographer to avoid extra form and undesirable area in the frame.
There are many kinds of spot meters such as:
- Pentax spot meter
- Sekonic spot meter
- Soligor digital spot meter
Pentax spot meter is made for zone system. It has an inner and outer ring with a 1 degree spot to analyze light beam by 1 degree angle of measure. It is a basic spot meter for 35mm camera. For decades Pentax spot meter have set exposure standards for many cameras and professional photographers.
Sekonic spot meter is very useful if some one wants to do spot, reflective and incident metering. It is much better than Pentax with more specialized LCD for 7 digital readings. It has versatility for metering and it has specialized shutter for analyzing beam of light.
There is another spot meter called Soligor digital spot meter and it is used to capture the brightest and darkest part of the scene in frame. A 9 volt battery is needed to power it. A filter is added for UV light to avoid false readings.
Spot meters are helpful but skill is also very important part of photography. Only a skillful professional photographer can take full advantage from it. Spot meters are perfect camera accessory to help out photography art. Nowadays in build spot metric cameras are made to decrease the need for of an additional spot meter.
