Sekonic L-358 underexposure

[puxleyuk]

Having now owned my first Sekonic L-358 for all of 2 days now, I took the opportunity to test my light meter outside to capture some shots of our heavy April snow showers (UK). As everything was covered in snow, and also the sky being a blanket of grey cloud, I thought this a good 1st test. I took the various incident readings and started shooting away in the back garden in manual mode (obviously matching the meter's suggested settings).

When viewing the various shots on my PC, I realised that all of the shots appeared slightly underexposed.

Later on in the day I proceeded to experiment further inside the house. Again, my shots appeared slightly underexposed with incident metering.

As a test, I setup an 18% grey card with spot-metering using the reflective meter of my Canon 5D. The camera suggested f4 (in ap. priority) at 1/30 ISO 200. The Sekonic suggested f4 at 1/60 ISO 200. When removing the grey card and taking 2 shots of the scene behind (a sofa with 3 sleeping cats), the camera was spot on, but the Sekonic's settings caused underexposure.

Having read through the Sekonic manual in the advanced sections, I switching on the Sekonic holding down ISO 1 & ISO 2 buttons and increased the compensation by .7 EV. The incidental metering of the Sekonic now gives a good exposure on my Canon 5D.

My question is, should I have had to do all of this in the first place?? Is it standard procedure to calibrate your light meter to your camera? Or, is it possible I have a faulty light meter? Also, as suggested in a number of other posts that I have read, I do have a new battery in my meter.

Please be nice, I'm a light meter newbie.

Pux.

[canonman]

Hiya !

I can here the frustration and concern in your voice over this, but the bottom line is that the very fact that there is the ability to calibrate something should tell you that it is not an exceptional scenario.

I assume you were incident reading with the Sekonic and didn't have the Lumigrid attached ?

Now that you are calibrated however, should mean no more under-exposure issues associated with easily fooled reflected readings !?

[puxleyuk]

Hi Canonman,

Thanks for the reply. No, I wasn't using the Lumigrid, these were proper incident readings with the dome extended.

As you say, now that I'm calibrated... I sort of wrongly assumed that the meter would just be right from the word go, ISOs 'n' all that. The Sekonic manual only briefly mentions the calibration option, and doesn't actually tell you how to do it.

Would I be right in thinking, then, that even though different cameras use the same ISO settings, their exposures differ when using the same settings?

Pux.

[canonman]

Hi Puxley,

I am by no means an expert on this, in fact I've never given it much thought. However I am guessing that that the reflected meter and sensor combination within every camera has variations, which are individually calibrated at the factory to give correct results based on ISO/exposure settings.

This could be a completely wrong assumption on my part, but it does make sense in principal.

[Eastern_herp]

A lot of exposure meters will underexpose lightly to make sure that highlights don't get blown out. Even back in the days of slide film they were the same.
I hadn't realised that you could calibrate the Sekonic though. Mine is underexposing too by about a third to a half of a stop so I might adjust mine. Where did you find out how to do it?

Andrew