small digital camera as lightmeter?

[John Camp]

Has anybody ever tried using one of those very small digital cameras as a light meter? I was looking through the manual of my Pentax 750z and they actually suggest that the camera can be used that way, including spot metering with the tele function. Since that particular camera is bigger than some light meters, it's not an entirely useful idea, but there are some digital cameras no bigger than a credit card. Anybody ever tried it? Is there a thread on it? I wonder what's the smallest camera you can get that would provide a read-out? Think I'll check Best Buy tonight...

JC

 

[Hlynur]

This is a good question.
I'm not sure digicams give the same reading as film cameras. I recently got myself a olympus xa, one of the smallest compact film cameras ever made. I sometimes use it as light meter when I'm using my meterless Zorki-4. My used xa cost around 50$...they are popular and I think they are usually more expensive on ebay. The xa does not have a spot meter.

 

[Warren T.]

hi, that's an interesting question, but if t's a compact meter that you're looking for, have you checked out the Sekonic L208? It features reflected and incident readings. I use this meter when I'm out shooting with my meterless RF cameras.

--Warren

 

[Finder]

It has been done. David Munch did an article on it several years ago in Outdoor Photographer or some similar magazine.

 

[ywenz]

Yes, it will work great

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/s30-as-meter.shtml

 

[remrf]

I bought my current digital camera with a variation of this theme in mind. My idea was to use the Minolta z-1 as a "digital polaroid".

When I worked in the commercial photography arena (about 20 years ago) we used color and B&W polaroid 4x5" all the time to check lighting and shadow fall when using both quartz and strobe lighting in the studio. When I bought my lf gear last year I got a 545 P-back for the Omega and then shopped for film. A box of 20 sheets of type 54 asa 100 color runs about $60.00 currently from B&H. I don't have any clients footing my film costs today and I can't justify that kind of expentiture for personal pleasure on an ongoing basis. So I looked around for a digital camera that
had :

A. Manual settings for speed and f-stop
B. Adjustable asa settings
C. A hot shoe to trigger my mono lights.
D. Had an output on camera for direct connection to a tv monitor screen.

There are quite a few digital cameras that meet the above criteria but most of them cost more than I have invested in my lf set up and strobes , film holders, tripod and lenses.


The Z-1 looked promising. It had all of the above and I got one new for about $200.00. It also had a 10x optical zoom so I could optically duplicate what my film camera was seeing from the tripod almost exactly. However when I got it home I discoverd that the hot shoe was Minolta only and only two flash units would fit it. There are no adaptors to regular hot shoe to be had. I bought one of the Minolta units and thought I would just point it straight up and trigger my mono lights with optical slaves . I masked the on camera strobe so that it would fire the slave triggers but not interfere with my desired lighting. I thought I was good to go.

Nope.

With the ttl flash system used on the digitals the sync was not right. The camera image sensor did not "see" the mono lights when they fired.

A friend found a widget made by Sunpak that looks like a hand grip for a camera. It has a hot shot on it (the regular type) and it has an optical slave trigger built in that is adjustable as to when it will trigger the hot shoe in 5 increments. Number three works with my Minolta and mono lights.

I thought I was all set.


Nope.

The Bogen mono lights have about 80 volts present on the sync line when fired. This will fry the poor little Sunpak widget which wants to see less than 10 volts.

So I borrowed my friends Wein voltage reduction hot shoe adaptor and finally I thought I had it together.

Sort of.

The Minolta only stops down to f-8 in manual mode although it does have enough variation in terms of asa settings.

The end result is as I hoped.

Sort of.

A digital polaroid that I can view on the monitor "In studio" as I shoot . But only in a narrow range of f-stops. The speed settings have much more latitude and I can finagle the thing to approximate light values lower than what would be had with f-8 but it will not give me a true dof at the adjusted setting.

A half a$$ed digital polaroid.


Sigh.....