The following passage is from Ansel Adams' The Negative:
"In most photography we record light reflected from the subject, rather than the light incident upon it."
Here, Adams states that reflective metering was more common during his career. This puzzles me for two reasons:
In-camera meters weren't very common, as far as I am aware, during most of Adams' life. The first camera with a built in meter was a Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex from '35, but couples, built-in light meters seem to be far more common in cameras from the 1970's and later, although mostly in 135 format.
Especially because Adams shot large format, the lack of built-in reflective meters would mean Adams needed to use a handheld meter. This would, logically, enable him to do not just reflective metering, but also more precise incidence metering. As most know, incidence metering is not affected by reflections or colours which would generally fool the reflective meter.
With this in mind, why does Adams say the reflective meter was more commonly used? Were there any limitations or decisions to choose reflective over incidence metering?