Light meter

Hi, how many of us use light metres i use my strobes and allways guessing by looking at the LCD screen to see if it looks ok

Regards Dave

Light metres are completely useless with flashes. On the other hand, I love my flashmetre.

My Lunasix F lightmeter does flash as well!

Sekonic L358 for me. I rarely use it for outside daylight work, but always indoors with flash.

Exactly the same

Since I know my lighting kit I find I rarely use a meter much at all but would if I needed to calculate lighting ratios

Measuring lighting ratios is the only good application I can see for a lightmeter these days.

One can judge exposure using the histogram on the back LCD and from what I have seen how people use lightmeters, their process is not really quicker or less demanding on strobes.

I find that the visual feedback is good enough for judging lighting ratios and if you really wanted to be more systematic, you could also calculate lighting ratios by considering the strength and distance of light sources.

So in summary, I don't feel that there is much room left for external lightmeters in the digital age.

+1 more

When setting up studio lights. I wouldn't be without my sekonic 308s. Im looking to upgrade to the 478 at some point. They are that good....

That looks a very messy meter to use

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dKNAzkeiWA

I've had two Sekonics just die in the past. The Gossen Digipro F's
(or similar) are much better. Faster than using the camera to take
a reading. Aperture priority and shutter priority. I've two of them.
Handy that they use a cheap single AA battery.

The contrast range reading at the end of the video is great for
incident light readings say by a window. It shows you the full range
of stops covered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q1s1zCQ6z0

Flash meters are useful with manual flashes to see if the
power settings 1/2... 1/4... 1/8 etc. are correct or not.....
they rarely are

--

The L 308s is one of the low cost lightmetres with good reviews and to be fair it does the job. I value my photography but don't know wheather I want to spend two or three hundred pounds or more on a lightmetre.

Regards Dave

Hi Dave, as prev stated, I use a L308s on my lighting setups, you can do it by the histogram, but it is easier with a meter and more professional imo.

I tend to use a 4 light setup with a white BG and 2 lights with a black BG, and prefer to set the lights 1.5 stops higher on the BG than the main and set the fill to 33% - 60% of the main.

This takes less than 5 minutes and would be tricky as either guesswork or to do via the histogram.

A new L308s is around £130 these days and you may be able to pick up a prev owned one on fleabay for less.

Cheers Chris will get one after xmas have seen them for £107 new, a bit fed up with looking on back of camera don't think you can allways trust histogram, have a good Christmas all

Regards Dave

I still use my polaris flash meter a lot.
especially when shooting video, and setting up lights.