Tell me about your Sekonic L-208 Light Meter

kshapero

kshapero

South Florida Man
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Tell me about your experience using this classic light meter. Found a nice used one at the LCS. Ever attached it to your flash mount shoe? :cool:
 
I don't know that I would class it as a classic, but I like mine.

It's small and accurate and the battery lasts forever. I've never bothered with a flash shoe because I always incident meter, but only when the light changes so much that I can't adjust for the difference myself. It stays in my pocket most of the time.

The ergonomics aren't brilliant, but for the size of the device are reasonable.
 
Hi Akiva,
my main lightmeter is a gossen lunasix but I´m using the L208 a lot if I want something lighter to carry with me.
With my M2 I normally use it hand held as I found it too big for a film M flash shoe.
Or i use a cheap wirst strap from an old mobile phone or similar with it, I find it very practical this way.
It is a nice piece of plastic...I dropped mine once a couple of years ago and the needle for metering is now bent but still works fine.
On bigger cameras (polaroid 195 and 600se) I was very happy to put it on the flash mount shoe. The mount of the 208 is made of plastic but comes with a rubber ring, it´s very stable once mounted on the flash shoe.
It does the job, if you can get one for cheap go for it.
Hope this helps you.
Cheers
Giulio
 
I like its small size since I always use the neck lanyard. And I prefer its analog meter and dial operation. Quite adequate for my needs. I would definitely buy another one.
 
It is accurate within its small scale, but not when compared to full size or digital display meters - that is, you can't expect consistent readings beyond 1/2 stop accuracy, simply because of needle parallax. Also, the measurement pattern in reflected mode seems odd, compared to my higher end meters, and pointing it slightly off may cause inconsistencies of up to +/-1.5 EV either way. That is, it is a good "better than nothing" meter - but where the light is really difficult I'd rather pack something ten times its weight and bulk.
 
If I compare it with my TTL cameras metering and iPhone meter it doesn't match. :)

One of the big advantages of it is to be able to measure incident light.
This one is good enough for it. Bright light, low light, doesn't matter.

How do you judge if meter is accurate? I do it by negatives only.
All of b/w negs are good for scanning and printing with metering done by L-208 for me.

Haven't done enough of color film to judge, just not doing it often.
 
I agree entirely with sego - that's been my exact experience too. Handy to have though.

The integral incident meter is useful - I find it more accurate than the reflected method cos exact pointing isn't so necessary.
 
If I make sure my Sekonic is pointed slightly downward it seems to work fine. It is very good if I actually walk right up and meter my subject directly.

If the proof is in the pudding then I have to recommend it. My negatives come out great. It is very easy to carry and gives more consistent results than Sunny 16.
 
Just don't drop it or hit it against anything. They're not the toughest little things. I like mine, but I was careless with it a couple of times and had to pay for it. Otherwise, I take a light reading off my hand or the asphalt or some other surface with it. Difficult light situations are not for any meter and this one's no exception.
 
I also a user who prefer to keep the Twinmate in incident mode primarily. Pioneer is right about walking close to the subject for a better reflected reading, but for my type of photography, it's just much faster to take a general incident reading and go from there.

Light sensitivity is not great at the low end, but that's not usually an issue since it's easy to remember exposure for those situations.

I carry mine on a retractable string that clips to my belt. Cost me $2.50 and it works very well in practice.

Tijmendal an alernative would be the Gossen DigiSix.
 
Accuracy vs Precision

Accuracy vs Precision

Sekonic says the 208 is accurate, and I suppose they would know.

But there's more to the problem, like the color temperature of the subject and the color temperature for which the meter was calibrated, which will be a factor for all lightmeters. What some might question is its precision or repeatability, same meter under the same conditions. Or are they really the same conditions? Just looks that way? All assuming a meter that's not beat-up and that has a good battery. Nice that the 208 is not too hard on its battery.

It's fine to judge the results by the negatives or the slides, but that introduces the error of your camera's shutter speeds into the judgement too.

So we have a sort of ad hoc, improvised solution that gives us pretty good results.
 
Only use it in incident, too wide to my taste for reflected. Nice size, excellent battery life and easy to find battery. The little pouch that is with it is a bit cumbersome. And it does shift the iso too easy I find.
 
The button that actuates the light reading is not conveniently placed for measuring from a camera hot shoe. I agree with most of the comments so far, but would add that one thing that decreases its precision is that the ISO scale for setting is tiny, so regardless of the meter's accuracy, you cannot set that scale to a 1/3 stop level with any consistency. When I used to shoot more slides that was a slight issue, but it does not bother me with negative film.

It is definitely small, light, and great if you tend to like non-digital user interfaces.
 
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