Original Posting: 1998-04-29

www.hyperzine.com and Popular Photographer Magazine

Videotape Review: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Metering (Montizambert Photography)

Learning about photography with the brothers Montizambert is a delight. Their occasional humorous antics provide a refreshing comic relief while you are trying to absorb technical information. But as nice as that is, you watch how-to tapes in order to learn, and that’s what you'll do with these tapes.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Metering may not cover everything, but the two 45- minute tapes do clarify a great many aspects about using exposure meters. Even if your exposures are generally satisfactory, the suggestions here will help you be consistently accurate in getting correct tonal values on film.

Volume One is devoted to metering basics, with essential information for everyone above the snapshooter level. The clear explanations and demos really demystify how a meter “thinks.” And the logical “plus/minus” system gives you a simple way to extrapolate those meter readings to obtain good exposures.

The demos cover both incident and reflective metering, emphasizing that instead of exposing for a subject’s tonality, expose for middle gray and the subject’s tones will fall into place.

The tape is full of practical tips. For example, laminate your gray card. That will make any glare on it obvious and you’ll be able to easily position it to eliminate the glare. And it answers that age-old question, “Should I point an incident meter at the light or at the camera?” Accurate metering depends on knowing where the main source of illumination is, and the Montizamberts explain while demonstrating demo metering indoors and out.

Volume Two, subtitled ColorZoning, shows how to make a simple chart that will enable you to predicably control color by the amount of exposure. Since your idea of bright red may not tbe the same as someone else's, the chart also gives you a way to communicate with a client. You can also use this system with black-and-white to produce realistic tones or any tone you want on film.

On this tape, too, are many practical tips, such as how to prevent color contamination on a background. The Montizamberts also show you how to tackle photographing some tricky subjects: a computer screen, an object with an LCD screen and glowing numbers, a subject standing in front of a stained glass window. Except that the way they do it, it’s not tricky at all–easy if you understand the principles in these tapes.

As in their tape Home Made Photography, the closing credits and the action behind them are worth watching. (The “nude model” listed in the credits may have you playing the tape over and over, but she ain’t there.)