I completely agree with the 1/30 @ 2.8 or 2 comment. For literally decades, and a series of different photo careers, I never used a meter except in the studio, and when I went digital, with my Nikon D300, that was the first time I had let the camera's meter have its way. I discovered something then, about what meters do that I've never realized: photos at night looked basically as if they'd been shot in the daytime. Too bright, too much detail, unreal. All of those years I'd been proportionally underexposing as night scenes got darker--if it was really bad I'd open a stop or two, but never past a shutter speed I could handle, and guess what, it was the right thing to do.
The same was happening in other less obvious situations.
The bottom line was that over a long period of time I'd evolved an exposure scheme that was appropriate to the situations, not based on the absolute light level, and I didn't need the crutch of a meter plus a bunch of zone figuring, metering highlights and shadows, and "previsualization" stuff to get the right exposure. I just set the camera and immediately shot the danged picture then, not five minutes later after it was gone.
The comment that a meter is "necessary" is of course ridiculous as well as unnecessarily obsessive. The first 75 years of photography, some of the most famous photographers we have, did just fine without meters.
edit: just read the comment above mine. For the last six months I've been shooting x-ray film, which has the same problems as collodion. For the first few shots, I had problems, not realizing the tungsten light problems, but I quickly readjusted, based on my previous experience. I suspect that meter drones, not having any baselines, would have a MUCH bigger problem than I'm having. 🙂
