Light Meter Calibration

hi
does anyone know how you calibrate a Prinzlite AutoMaster light meter.

Manual available here but it'll probably cost more than you paid for the light meter.

Probably not worth bothering.... I doubt if it was
ever accurate, very cheap meter. Buy a Weston or
Gossen off ebay.

shim

Always a fatal mistake and guaranteed to induce as much paranoia as comparing light meters! Gossen, Lunasix and Minolta (my personal choice) are great and a Weston if you want a solar powered meter. Westons are pretty poor in low light though.

Lunasix are made by Gossen and use very expensive batteries or you can have a very expensive modification. Minolta were good, but sadly no longer in business. The quickest to use meter I've ever had is the Gossen Sixtomat digital and it only needs one AA battery (cheap as chips, lasts years). It can be used as a normal meter, aperture priority or shutter priority also gives EV. No one should be without one (they are that good). Westons last forever and with the Invercone they are very accurate (no other incident light meter takes proper account of backlighting). The Invercone can be used on an SLR if you fix it to a filter ring and make a speed adjustment.

I used to use the Pentax Digital Spotmeter a lot with film, hardly ever use it now.

Edit Cameraking are doing the Sixtomats for £115
Note: these don't do FLASH partly mentioned
on Microglobes site. There is a flash
version (much dearer)

shim

sekonic makes some fine meters also.
sheppard/polaris is very good for flash and good for ambient, easy to calibrate.
I use a polaris.
low light ..... not so hot, but I use it for studio work, accurate to 1/10 stop, and have tested it head to head with much more expensive meters.

I left Sekonic off because I had an expensive one that just died!
I still have the Sekonic Studio Meter with the slide set in a leather wallet. Probably the nicest toy ever made although it is very accurate and was very popular on Hollywood film sets.

shim

how do you calibrate them? Against a known light source or to Zero like an electrical resistance meter?

best way is against either your camera, or in a studio set up, against known, good meter.

to set up against your camera, you need a greycard. With a constant lightsource, take a reflected reading with the camera... take a reflected reading with the meter, both off the card....pop the battery compartment off, and there's a button to push, then use the rocker switch to dial in any + or - stops to get the meter and your camera reading the same.