Exposure waaaaaay off

[Chris Wright]

you’re probably running into the problem of incident vs spot vs reflective light. for instance, in snow, your histogram would read right in the middle, but the person would still be too dark. the grey card needs to fill just the actor’s face or you’re averaging super bright with superdark. =i.e. wrong averaged incident light. The snow is reflecting more than 18% grey.

This is how you make sure you don’t have underexposed or overexposed by spot metering specific areas (without) averaging your light.
This is a huge problem with oversized grey cards. It has to match the size of the frame you are currently at.

Another problem with a grey card is that you can get shadows and reflections directly onto the cardboard turning it into a spot meter.
For example: try angling the grey card toward the light source and you’ll see 3 f-stop changes every 10 degrees or so.

instead, the expodisk acts like an incident meter in conjunction with your camera by facing the camera as if it was a person.
that’s why the expodisk is almost foolproof for portraits or why professionals use light meters. they measure light from the source in different zone sizes: spot, medium portrait, landscape, all averaging different light amounts with a dome diffuser.

hope this little intro to the world of professional light metering was useful.

incident vs reflective light meters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fM9Nyb09b4

using an expo disk,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5GqVTYuT-Y

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[Duke Sweden]

Um…..actually my new monitor was set way too bright ????

But, once again, thanks, Chris, for the effort you put into your responses to me.

[Chris Wright]

thanks for posting the solution. i figured as much, but wanted to give the benefit of doubt. hopefully my post helps you in the future, at least what to look out for.

[Duke Sweden]

Yeah, the thing that was driving me nuts was my exposure was fine in camera, histogram correct, exposure meter, the image looked great in the LCD (not an indicator of proper exposure, I know) but when I opened the files on my PC they were super bright and apparently over exposed. Like I said, monitor brightness way too bright.
Cheers.