light meter app

[old bob]

I have noticed on google a lot of light meter apps are appearing, some free, some at a small charge, there is even an old school type light meter app available, has anyone actually tried one of these? I am not convinced by the product reviews under each item as they are regularly planted, my only thought is that on a modern mobile phone the actual light sensor on the front of the phone is very small so collecting light to give a true reading could be limited, but still I would be interested to hear from anyone has has tried and discarded the app or if anyone has tried one and still uses it with good results

Old Bob

 

[MikeMGB]

I have Pocket Light Meter and myLightMeter, I find both to be accurate enough for black and white in my Leica IIIa, plus they seem to match the meter on my D-Lux 109 very well.

 

[DanskDynamit]

+1 for Pocket Light Meter. It works for me.

 

[nickthetasmaniac]

I have Pocket Light Meter and it works well enough in decent light but struggles in lower light.

It's not particularly enjoyable though, and I find myself using my L308 a lot more.

 

[taemo]

+1 also on Pocket Light Meter

I compared it to my Fuji X-E2 and Sekonic L-508 and got similar reading.

 

[Spanik]

Does the battery lasts a couple of years like on a L208?

 

[Huss]

I have Pocket Light Meter and it works well enough in decent light but struggles in lower light.

It's not particularly enjoyable though, and I find myself using my L308 a lot more.

Yeah, in decent light where it is really easy to also use Sunny F16 it works fine. But blows when you need it in lower light.
I have given up on it as I cannot trust it. It is right 95% of the time, in the type of lighting that I can nail it myself w/o using a light meter, and the other 5% it is all over the place.

This thread on apug shows two screen shots where it was way off. Funny thing the first screen shot was provided as an example of how good it is. Guess he didn't pay attention to what it's readings were showing.

http://www.apug.org/forum/index.php?threads/phone-light-meter-app.139379/

 

[ACullen]

I tried Pocket Light Meter and found it generally reliable for B&W. It would freeze however all too frequently. I recently bought (my first) a hand held lightmeter ( digital Sekonic) and find it much faster to use than the app and more reliable - because it never freezes up.

 

[MikeChong]

I use Pocket Light Meter as well for B&W to give me an idea of where to start with exposure calculations, then from there I adjust according to the light conditions and what look I'm trying to accomplish. Works well for me.

 

[02Pilot]

I've been using Light Meter (free, Android - the one with the vintage-looking meter interface) for several years now. Pretty good overall, though the reflected light reading bottoms out around EV4; the incident meter seems to work below that, for whatever reason (they do use different cameras). Zoom feature offers a bit of "spot" metering functionality, though it's much too wide to consider it a true spot meter.

 

[Godfrey]

I have a half dozen or more of the software-only apps. They all work okay, Pocket Light Meter is as good as any of them.

I also have the Lumix app and its incident dome. This works a bit better than the others.

I also have the Lumu metering attachment and its apps. These work the best.

None quite match my Sekonic L-328, L-398, and (new) Sekonic L-478D for metering ergonomics, sensitivity, and accuracy.

G