Light meters

[arclight]

Does anyone still use a separate light meter?

Incident light readings used to be seen as good for dealing with tricky situations.

Or do most folk just fire off a burst of bracketed pics?

 

[Blapto]

I shoot medium format film (both landscapes and in the studio) so I do use a lightmeter.

I either use my D300 as a lightmeter if I'm carrying it with me, or use a Sekonic L-758D. You probably don't need anything as fancy as the 758 (I don't either, just I got a great deal on it).

Looking to pick up a tiny tiny hot shoe mounting lightmeter as well though, to use on my Yashica TLR when doing street photography. That said, I do most of my street photography on black and white, and I can normally guess exposure to within 3 stops anyway.

 

[CT]

I have a Sekonic L358 and I do use it, but mostly with medium format, although I do sometimes take incident readings with digital for tricky situations.

It's debatable if you really need one with digital with the preview screen and histogram.

 

[markta]

I use mine mainly for the better spot meter and also for incident readings only. I still regard my 758D as more accurate than the 5D Mk II, but not much in it, except when I absolutely want to nail the exposure.

The camera generally does a decent job though and it can argued about nailing exposures since most photo editing programmes enable exposure adjustment nowadays.

 

[kiasdad]

If I think the lighting is going to be difficult, I'll sometimes pop a Sekonic L508 meter into my camera bag. One of the benefits of using a hand-held meter is that it slows you down as you spend time assessing the lighting and I think it helps to improve my shots.

I use a Pentax digital spot meter with my large format kit.

Blapto, I think Gossen might make a meter that should fit the bill for your Yashica. The latest incarnation is the Gossen Digiflash. There's also a Voigtlander shoe-mounted meter that might be worth a look.

 

[jakeblu]

I use a light meter for setting up my lights.

I have two Elinchrom classics 500 and the meter allows me to take independent readings. I know it can be done without but I like the ease of use and simplicity of a meter.

Steve

 

[Cathus]

I've got a Sekonic 358, have only ever used it for my studio lights.

 

[HoppyUK]

With digital, you only need a light meter when setting up multiple studio lights. And even there you're using it more to set the relative lighting ratios than calculating the exposure.

At all other times, you will get more accurate exposure by adjusting to the histogram than any other way, including incident light measurement (which is easily done with a D-SLR if that's what you want).

Richard.