You're Probably Metering Wrong (And Your Negatives Know It)

Here's the thing about metering for film photography: you can get it "close enough" for years and never realize what you're leaving on the table. Color negative is forgiving. Labs correct for a lot. Your scans come back looking fine, so you figure your technique is solid.

Then you shoot a roll of slide film. Or you try to pull detail out of deep shadows. Or you compare your negatives to someone who actually knows what they're doing, and the gap hits you. Not sharpness, not composition. Tonal richness. That's where it shows.

Metering is probably the most undertrained skill once you're past the beginner phase. Not because the information isn't out there, but because "good enough" exposure looks almost identical to correct exposure. Until it doesn't.

The Reflective Meter Trap

If you're using your camera's built-in meter, you're using a reflective meter. It reads light bouncing off your scene and averages everything toward middle gray (18% gray, technically). Works great in evenly lit scenes. Falls apart the moment you have real contrast.

Bright sky behind your subject? Meter reads the sky, underexposes your subject. Dark background? Meter overcompensates, blows out your highlights. The meter isn't broken. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do. But it's optimizing for "average brightness," not for "the exposure that makes this scene look right on this film stock."

Most intermediate shooters know this conceptually. Way fewer actually compensate for it consistently.

Meter for the Shadows

The most important metering rule for negative film: expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights. This isn't new. Ansel Adams built the Zone System around it. But most people nod along and then ignore it in practice.

Here's why it matters: negative film captures shadow detail on the thinnest part of the emulsion. Underexpose, and that detail just isn't recorded. No amount of scanning adjustment will bring back what the film never captured. Overexpose by a stop or two, though, and highlights compress gracefully. The latitude is asymmetric on purpose. Negative film is designed to handle overexposure better than under.

In practice: when your meter gives you a reading, ask yourself if it's being fooled by the bright parts of the scene. If yes, open up a stop. If you're metering a shadow area directly, trust it. If you're taking an averaged reading, add half a stop to a full stop as a buffer.

Rating Film Below Box Speed

Simple technique that more people should use: rate your film a stop slower than box speed. Portra 400? Meter at 200. Tri-X 400? Rate it at 200.

This isn't "overexposing" in a destructive way. You're just giving the film more light than the minimum it technically needs, which means denser negatives, better shadow detail, and smoother tones. Highlights won't blow. Negative film handles it fine. Your lab's scanner will too.

This is especially useful in mixed or tricky lighting. Builds in a margin of error on every frame. Think of it as insurance.

When Your Phone Is Good Enough

You don't always need a Sekonic. Phone-based light meter apps have gotten pretty accurate, and for most daylight situations they'll get you within half a stop of a dedicated handheld meter.

The real advantage of a phone meter isn't just cost. It's that you actually have it with you. The best meter is the one you use. A Sekonic sitting at home while you're out shooting is worth nothing.

FilmFolio has a built-in light meter made for film shooters. It lives in the same app where you're already tracking your rolls, so there's no friction switching between tools. Meter, log the reading with the frame, keep shooting.

Point is: use some meter consistently. Sunny 16 is fine as a starting point, but it breaks down fast in shade, golden hour, overcast, or anything indoors.

Stop Bracketing Everything

Bracketing is a crutch. Fine when you're learning. But if you're still bracketing every important shot after a year of shooting, you're burning film instead of building skill.

The goal is to look at a scene, take a reading, factor in what you know about the stock, and nail the exposure in one frame. Not to save money (though you will), but because that confidence changes how you shoot. You move faster. You commit. You stop second-guessing.

Get there by actually reviewing your results. When scans come back, compare the frames you metered carefully against the ones you rushed. Notice which stocks are more forgiving. Track your hit rate over time. This is where frame-level logging pays off. If you recorded your settings with each shot, your scans become a feedback loop instead of just pretty pictures.

Metering Is a Conversation

The meter gives you data. The stock has known characteristics. The scene has a mood you're trying to hit. Good metering is the intersection of all three. Not blind obedience to a number. An informed decision about how much light to let in.

That decision gets better with practice and with data. Every roll you shoot and review with settings intact makes the next one easier. The point isn't perfect metering. It's intentional metering.

---

Questions? Find us on Instagram @filmfolio.app