Easy to use light meter

[Simon Larbalestier]

Hi Peter,
The Sixtomat Digital is a great meter to use. Very portable, accurate and easy to use. I am an analogue sort of guy and so initially the "menu" system took a little while to get used to but now it is great. The only "niggle" I have with it is the way the readout is presented. The Bar readout is quite small but I find it the most useful as a pictorial guide to the nearest F stop. The numerical one is large and easy to see but can be confusing initially. An exposure of just under F11 is shown as F8.9 (big 8, small 9) and so you could sett F8 when F11 would be better. Other than that, it is an excellent meter and very good VFM.

Kim

FWIW i'd second Kim on this i got one recently and use it a lot in incident mode.
The Calculite XP is also very good i gave one to nightfly (chris) i think that's his screen name? I dug out the old gossen Luna 6 yesterday and ordered up some new batteries for it. Spot meters are also worth if you're in the marketr for one: - look at the earlier Sekonic model 508 (not the slight larger and more expensive 608) i sold one of these off recently: flash and ambient zoom 1-4 degree spot readings and 3 memory capacity, all in a weathe resistant case
Top meter of all for me and fastest to use is the Digital Pentax Spot modified by zone V1 in the mid 80's. It came with a zone scale on the side of the scale and i just follow Fred Picker's advice: measure for the brightest part in the image - set the value given eg "15" at the "zone VII" on the provided scale and read off the exposure value - takes seconds and doesn't get fooled with tricky back light.

 

[lmd91343]

I´ll give my vote for the Gossen Luna Pro (or Lunasix in Europe).
After 22 years using it I didn´t find any situation where it wouldn´t give a usable reading.

Ernesto

Ditto.

I have three old Gossen meters: Luna Pro; Luna Pro S; and Luna Pro F.

Bogen sells a gossen made sleeve the battery compartment and holds silver batteries. I bought mine a while ago for about $19 from a camera store. From web: :BATTERY KIT / Cat. No: GO 4145 => Old Cat. No: 4145 For older Luna-Pro and Luna-Pro S only, includes two SR44 cells."

I have found all three gossen meters to be more sensitive in low light than my Sekonic 308B.

The nice thing about the Luna Pro F and Luna Pro S (not the Luna Pro vanilla), is that you can dial in filter factors. I like that when I use RFs.

 

[lmd91343]

Here are some helpful specs:

308S = EV -5 ~ EV 26.2

L358 = EV -2 to 22.9

Luna Pro S = EV -8.0 to +24

It looks like the Luna Pro S provides the best low light performance.

Ariya,

Are you sure of those numbers? I have those meters and they display those values, but they can't measure that low.

I found from the maker's sites at 100 asa: Luna Pro(S) EV -4 to +17; Luna Pro F EV -1 to +17; and the Sekonic 308 EV 0 to EV 19.9.

Sekonic used to be a bit secretive about the EV range of the 308. I found that when I was shopping for one. Now the display it on the revised web page.

When comparing these to my Canon F1N, which has sensitivity down to EV -2, these values seem right.

 

[PeterL]

Wow, now you mentioned the range of your Canon camera, I looked up my OM-4Ti's range. It's EV -5 - +19. I'm impressed. Then again, I should've known. Using a pinhole body cap (about equal to a 50mm / f 512), it automatically exposed at 8 seconds, no problems. The slide came out perfect.

Sorry for the OT 🙂

Still, strange that Adorama etc. would put up different figures for the light meters than the manufacturers do themselves. I trust the latter, though.


Peter.

 

[lmd91343]

Wow, now you mentioned the range of your Canon camera, I looked up my OM-4Ti's range. It's EV -5 - +19. I'm impressed. Then again, I should've known. Using a pinhole body cap (about equal to a 50mm / f 512), it automatically exposed at 8 seconds, no problems. The slide came out perfect.

Peter,

Canon's ad for the F1N used to be, if you can see it you can shoot it.

I also have an old mechanical F1 with the low light prism. Off the top of my head, it is almost as sensitive as your OM-4Ti. With an f1.2 lens and the special laser cut focus screen, it can meter in darker conditions than I could focus!

I have found that for EV -2 and lower is good for macro and night time for day shots.

 

[oftheherd]

Wow, now you mentioned the range of your Canon camera, I looked up my OM-4Ti's range. It's EV -5 - +19. I'm impressed. Then again, I should've known. Using a pinhole body cap (about equal to a 50mm / f 512), it automatically exposed at 8 seconds, no problems. The slide came out perfect.

Sorry for the OT 🙂

Still, strange that Adorama etc. would put up different figures for the light meters than the manufacturers do themselves. I trust the latter, though.


Peter.

One more OT. I have always been impressed with my Fujica ST 901. At ASA 25 (not the 100 all use now), its meter was rated by Fujica at EV -3 to 18. I think nobody had one that good when it came out about 1974-75. If I recall, that is 20 seconds at f/1.4 to 1/1000 at f/16. In actuallity it would get down to about 30 seconds at f/1.4. Available light with a built in meter!

 

[Kim Coxon]

The only meter I know that beats this is the one in the Pentax LX which goes down to EV -6.5.

Kim

Wow, now you mentioned the range of your Canon camera, I looked up my OM-4Ti's range. It's EV -5 - +19. I'm impressed. Then again, I should've known. Using a pinhole body cap (about equal to a 50mm / f 512), it automatically exposed at 8 seconds, no problems. The slide came out perfect.

Sorry for the OT 🙂

Still, strange that Adorama etc. would put up different figures for the light meters than the manufacturers do themselves. I trust the latter, though.


Peter.

 

[jamiewakeham]

I'm not at home for the manual, but I think it is 30 degrees.

Thanks for that. So not exactly a spotmeter, then! Pity - I really prefer spotmetering from a midtone to trying to work out how the machine is averaging different values.

A little more OT-ness, but can anyone suggest the cheapest reliable spotmeter? I'm almost tempted by a sverdlovsk...

Cheers
Jamie