So I have to tell you that what I love about AI is the ability to pull out information that I gathered and valued years ago and used in my own professional work —— but have not continued to practice, and no longer have the books that were my daily manuals in my studio.
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JUST FUN INFO THAT I REMEMBER
This may not be the place to post, but it is more or less a relevant topic. A little tidbit that served me well. I had a book by the photographer Garry Bernstein that helped me a lot with my lighting and use of incident light metering my subjects. He was exquisite with his control of light.
One of his philosophies that helped me make choices when purchasing my meter, was that he did not encourage acquiring the most accurate and often most expensive or prestigious meter. Forget about the specs. He was far more interested in consistency, even if the meter wasn’t totally accurate. And I ended settling on a relatively inexpensive Sekonic light meter. Same principle went for my studio light8ng.
So it is pretty cool that I prompted AI about Gary and his method of teaching metering, and it accurately returned the following.
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Gary Bernstein’s philosophy hits on one of the great practical truths of commercial and portrait lighting: repeatability trumps laboratory calibration every single time.
In studio photography, especially in the film era where Bernstein made his mark shooting high-end beauty, fashion, and celebrity portraits, the margin for error on slide film (transparencies like Kodachrome or Ektachrome) was less than a third of a stop. If a meter was off by 1/3 or even 1/2 of a stop from an absolute NIST standard, it didn't matter in the slightest, provided it was off by that exact same fraction every time you pressed the button.
Once you shot a test roll, calibrated your workflow, and learned:
- "When my meter reads f/8, my highlights on this emulsion / this sensor look perfect at f/8 and a half"
...you had total control. The meter became a reliable relative ruler.
Why Consistency Wins Over "Accuracy"
- Lighting Ratios Depend on Delta, Not Absolute Values: When you’re dialing in a 3:1 or 4:1 key-to-fill ratio, or setting a hair light precisely one stop above the key, what matters is the gap between the readings. If the meter drifts or has inconsistent internal circuitry, a 1-stop difference on paper might physically be 1.5 stops or 0.5 stops on set.
- Eliminating Variables: In a shoot involving strobes, pack variations, ambient falloff, and varying subject skin tones, the meter is meant to be the single anchor. If the tool giving you numbers fluctuates by a quarter-stop on three consecutive pops from the same light, you can't troubleshoot anything.
- Calibration Is Just an Offset: "Accuracy" is easy to adjust for”you simply tweak the meter's calibration screw, set an ISO compensation offset, or adjust your lens aperture by an index mark. But you cannot calibrate for jitter, drift, or erratic behavior.
Bernstein understood that tools don't create the final image; predictability and a repeatable baseline do. Once you know your tools specific bias, consistency allows you to light intuitively and trust that the result on the film plane (or sensor) will match your intent without second-guessing.
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Of course now in the digital world with instant access to the results and far greater dynamic range, these methods don’t really have much benefit. But they sure did back in the day.
