OK-ish cheap meter.

[_larky]

Hello.

I'm now poor 🙂

I'm looking for a fairly cheap meter, I need nothing fancy, I simply want to meter my hand or a face. I don't care if it's analogue or digital, I just want accurate results from metering the reflected light from skin tone.

Any thoughts?

 

[sevo]

Just about every one will do that, unless it is broken. In Germany I'd go with an older/lesser Gossen (avoid the ones that need mercury cells, there are enough that can do wih still available batteries), in the UK and Ireland I have picked up a couple of Weston Master V/Euro Master (battery independent, accurate, hard to kill).

In the US, there won't be much of a difference between prices of Japanese and European ones, so Sekonic would be a third option - or even an old Minolta Automater.

Do you have a known good meter or TTL metering camera? If not, you may want to buy your first meter new (where the cheapest for now might be the Sekonic Twinmate), or have it calibrated (again an extra expense of about $100).

 

[batterytypehah!]

In the US, old GE (General Electric) meters are plentiful. Mine is a DW-68 that I got for $5 at a camera show. Selenium, so not much use in low light.

Heavy and pretty big, though. Half of the size is the snap-on hood which you take off for low light readings (such as it's capable of). I think this design keeps them alive better than most other selenium meters.

Buy in person or very cheap on the 'net. You rarely find a seller who can actually tell you if it works, or even knows that it snaps apart in the middle, so keep in mind you could be bidding on a paperweight.

 

[_larky]

OK thanks, I'll take a look around. Never using a meter before, and either guessing or using the camera (I normally guess) has worked up to now, but I've decided this year to take more care.

I'll walk around town and see what I can find 🙂

 

[mgilbuena]

Do you have an iPhone or iPod touch with camera? There's a great light meter program that you can download for it.

 

[_larky]

I do have an iPhone, but I heard that was slow?