Light meter - yes or no?

Light meter - yes or no?

  • Always use light meter

    Votes: 284 32.1%

  • Never use light meter

    Votes: 43 4.9%

  • Generally don't bother

    Votes: 118 13.3%

  • Generally use one if I can

    Votes: 439 49.7%
  • Total voters
    884
I generally use one. In certain conditions, I'll just use sunny f/16, but I do like having a meter available as I haven't spent enough time learning to be my own meter yet.
 
I use a NEX 7 as my meter. Sorry, not idealogically correct, but I get lots of digital vs. film comparisons and film almost always wins!
 
Kingston said:
I realized I might need a light meter to start with. What would be a cheap and accurate light meter to go well with a FSU RF? Would you recommend the leningrad 2/4?
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The Leningrads seem to be liked well enough, working condition is, of course, the crucial factor when buying. If you want to stay with FSU gear, there is also the Sverdlovsk 4, probably the best FSU meter there is. Incident or reflective, very sensitive and almost a spot-meter but a little bit slower to use and it does depend on a battery.

If you aren't too fussed about sticking with FSU, the Weston Masters are amongst the best selenium meters around. Going for a III-V model will not set you back a fortune. Models before the III are mostly dead and the late models (Euromaster etc) fetch high prices. Still, you need to check they are working because any selenium meter can have a dead cell. Personal opinion but the IV has probably the easiest scale to read whilst having useful things like a needle-lock. Ideally, try to get one with the Invercone (incident) attachment, they are relatively hard and expensive to buy separately but well worth having.

EDIT: Not to patronise you but you said you "might need a meter to start with". If you are not familiar with using a meter in the first place, it will pay you to do your homework. All meters need some "interpretation" under many circumstances so you need to know when to adjust the suggested exposure and by how much. Whether that's simpler than using something like Sunny-16 and knowing when to adjust that "reading" is a debatable point.
 
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just got a twinmate to go with the 398. the big meter goes out with the Rollei, and the little one with the M. Happy family.

I like to have a meter with me. I don't meter all the shots, and I often play "guess the exposure" before I meter. Mostly I am right (because I tend to photograph in 3-4 consistent light situations, but occasionally, I want an exposure that's not the average norm, and so I use the meter up-close to my subject, measuring light and dark areas to decide where to place my middle gray.... don't try that with moving subjects though!
 
Hi,

My experience of elderly Westons is that they are dirt cheap and often just need an expert to look at them.My oldest one is from the 30's and needed a new cell made, the Weston Master II's just needed balancing - whatever that means. The II was made from the mid 40's.

Both are ideal but the 30's one isn't used much as I wanted it to complete the 30's Leica outfit. The Weston II is often used and is far better made than a lot of modern ones. I'm thinking of my Lunalite which is in the get-repaired-one-day heap after the battery terminal came off with the 9v battery...

I've had two Leningrads one failed when the lever to switch between scales broke, the other is perfectly OK (fingers crossed).

Regards, David
 
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69087

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69087

I often use my Point and Shoot cameras as a lightmeter .:D
I have always interpreted my readings. i used a Weston V many years ago,
later a Zeiss LED meter. I mostly "guess" if i want very consistent readings!
It takes practice. Living in northern latitudes has sometimes had me foxed.
I used to live in a city of very high altitude! No dusk. None!
I love the varying light and shadows of living in Toronto,Canada.
I don't shoot slide film anymore. I used to for pro jobs.
Then it was bracket and make in camera dupes, due to problems of copying..:bang:
 
I like to take our family FED-2 out. Few times per year.
Sunny 16 works well. And for Leica IIf as well.
Same for Moskva and MF Germans.
With 100 ISO it is easy.

I'm using free iPhone exposure meter if I want to get long exposure on the tripod, or I'm taking it under high ISO.
 
I've got 2 Leningrad 4s. Both work like a charm. On occasion I compare them to my Lunasix 3 just to make sure that they are still accurate - which they are. They are a bit slow to react, but as I don't do sports or wild life with my FSU rangefinders it certainly is no big deal; waiting a sec. to get a reading. Not much bigger than a matchbox and lightweight at that.
 
I more often than not use incident readings but I also use reflected readings.
I like my pictures better when I'm in the right exposure ballpark.
 
Sunny 16 is pretty obvious; beyond that, I use a light meter probably 90% of the time. If I'm using my Nikon F100 or F3, I'll use the built in meter. With my rangefinder cameras, I will use my handheld Sekonic L508 in reflected spot mode.

I don't have exposure problems with my negs and chromes, either. A few seconds of effort before pressing the shutter release is worth the effort. ;)
 
Plus, Verichrome Pan from the 60s and earlier made it easy to load a box camera and have success. We have some high latitude films now but nothing like the box camera films from the 'good old days' of Kodak.

This one from a friends father with his box camera and Verichrome, which shows just how much latitude they had back then. It is ideal conditions, but still shadow detail and some blue in the cloudy sky:

6881058260_752df17dc4.jpg
 
ray*j*gun said:
I have more trouble with focus issues because of my glasses (eyes) than exposure....do they have focus meters? Ah the joys of maturity.:p

Ray
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Olympus OM-F, which was their first stab at auto focus, has a focus indicator in the viewfinder for using manual focus lenses.

PF
 
Wow! Can't vote in this poll. Those 4 choices don't cover how I work.

Rarely use one during the day, and if I am using a camera that has a meter I frequently forget to check it.

At night, very rarely do I try to shoot without using one, unless I know from long experience what the light value is already.

In the day I like my Contax II or my Pentax SV

At night I shoot my ZI, my Pentax LX or my Pentax PZ1p (aging eyes make auto focus a good option.)

Of course it may be different if I am shooting medium or large format film. In that case the cost of the film and the number of shots I have to work with will certainly play into the decision.
 
I've been using a variety of rf/scale focus cameras which are supposed to have light meters, but don't any more. To compensate I use a Minolta flash meter IV, in ambi mode, with the incident dome in place to get a starting base exposure. From there I'll estimate/bracket.
 
Most of the time, I'm guesstimating and don't use a meter, at least on cameras without a built-in one. Even with slide film, this works quite well during daytime.

However, in tricky light situations and when I'm not sure, I'm using a meter once in a while.

Cheers,
Andreas
 
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