"...a nice handheld light meter... "
Do you like old school gear? Consider a vulgar old selenium meter. These early meters are powered by light, and don't need batteries. I have a couple of favorites...
Second-hand Weston Masters often sell on eBay for beer money- I paid $9 US for mine, before freight. Overhaul and calibration of an intact and working Weston should cost less than $100 at Quality Light Metric in California.
There were several versions of the Master, and the ASA ranges varied quite a bit. I've seen Master IIs that go up to only ASA 800 (like mine), and others that either deal with ASA 1600 or 3200. I think the modern ones go even higher.
Here's a website devoted to Weston meters:
http://westonmaster.com/
Old Gossen Sixtomats are also neat; the ones from the fifties are tiny things, very durable, and
dead simple to read and use. Very, very well laid-out scales, color-coded. A child can be taught to take and interpret reliable reflected readings with an old Sixtomat. (No shit. My father taught me to use his when I was about 8.) Five to ten bucks on eBay, in working condition. Quality Light Metric still services them, too. One caveat- some of them only read to ASA 400. If you're using pushed T-Max 3200 in dimly-lit bars, leave the vintage Sixtomat at home.
Sekonic's L-398 is a more modern derivative of the old Norwood Director cinematographic light meter. Again, selenium-cell, no batteries required. Pretty big ASA range, as I recall. Might still be in production, and there are plenty to be had on eBay, on trading fora, and at used camera shops and shows. More recent production generally equals higher price, though you should still easily find one in great shape and working accurately for under $200 US.
You mentioned some need for an aperture priority function- not sure what you mean, but both the Weston and the Sixtomat will offer a slough of of aperture and speed choices for a given reading, at a glance: 1/60th @ f5.6, 1/30th @ f8, 1/15th @ f11, for example. Westons in particular show an appalling spread of speeds and apertures, basically everything possible between f1 and f32, all at a whack. So, if you
need to be shooting at f11 for whatever reason, there's your shutter speed for the given light, right in front of you.
Westons and Sixtomats (especially Sixtomats) are well designed for quick reflected readings, and are totally usable for incident readings with their respective proprietary diffusers in place. I think the L-398 is a better tool for incident out of the box- seems to have been designed for it.
If you can, handle a few before you buy, and go for one you find easy to READ.
