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Hi Neil
I was watching a video on the sekonic 478 light meter and it gives a flash perecentage reading. Does this relate to the manual power settings on the speedlite such as 1/1 1/2 1/4 etc? If yes, how do you work out what is 20%, 30 % etc
Thanks
Warwick
Comments
Yes, you can only use it with a Manual Mode flash (flash meters cannot correctly read TTL flash since the pre-flash will trigger a reading and if you set that reading it will be grossly under-exposed as the pre-flash is is very small) so you may set an ambient you like, set the flash, and then take a reading of what your Aperture should be, once it equals what you initially set on camera for the ambient, say it was f8.0, you need to power up/down the flash so the meter then reads f8.0.
After that is done, you then see that ratio percentage of what power the flash is contributing to the ambient, eg: 20%, 30%, and so on.
If you want it to be equal in the 50% range, you have to then lower the ambient more so the flash contributes more to get correct exposure.
Generally a good ratio I find is the 20-30% range of flash power compared to the ambient.
You can get down to a fairly small amount of flash power so it acts like a fill more than dominant, I've had mine down to 5%, just a blip but still contributing to lift especially eye sockets.
A dark and moody shot would be like the 30% ambient and 70% flash power.
Entirely up to you of course.
Trev.