What is the most reliable, easiest to use, hand-held light meter?

[38Deardorff]

So many good ones. I carry a Pentax Digital spot meter & the tiny Digilux. It took a while to get used to the idiosyncrasies of the Digilux ....but it works well once you sort that out. It's my minimal go-to especially for travelling. If i were buying over i'd buy the Sekonic L308.

 

[Godfrey]

heh ... while the Sekonic L358 is my 'standard' meter, I have a few other meters ...



The one next to the L358 is my even older Sekonic L-328. It's slimmer, lighter, and even simpler than the L-358, although perhaps a stop or two less sensitive. The nice add-on to this one is that it comes with the normal hemispherical incident bubble, a reflective light cap, and an incident spot cap ... and there exists a nice narrow-angle spot scope for it too, which I have.

While I normally grab the L-358 these days, the L-328 is right next to it on my shelf and gets just barely a little less usage.

The L-328 and it's optional viewfinder (L-328V) are both small and light, and run on a single AA alkaline battery for an eon. The readout is clear and clean, and either shows Shutter/Aperture combinations or EV numbers. It also does wired or free flash metering.

G

... note: I've accreted this set of meters over the past 20-30 years. I'm shocked to discover that several of them are selling used nowadays for more than I paid for them new ...

 

[bbutterfield]

After going through a number of meters I’ve landed on the Sekonic Twinmate L-208 for general purpose work; it’s small, light, accurate, and I find I vastly prefer match needle analog to digital displays. I do haul out the digital Sekonic L-308x for incident readings but it isn’t nearly as ergonomic for me.

 

[Bill Clark]

Sekonic L-158 meter.

Used it for a long time and only for film anymore.

I do have a flash meter that I used sometimes when I had my studio set up.

I used the histogram with my Canon digital SLR. If you’re making photos with digital try using RAW capture and process them on a computer using Photoshop.

For me, I usually Am using my iPhone anymore for digital. Simple.

 

[panatomic]

My old Sekonic L-308S gave up the ghost yesterday. It was a nice run, about 10 years.

What should I try next? I’d like something as compact, but better build quality, and definitely with memory and averaging, or at least something that shows the contrast range of a scene.

 

[shawn]

I really like this one as it is very quick and you see all exposure combinations at once and will do the same if you dial in exposure compensation. I have the other metering attachments for it too but they are a bit bulky and don't really use them.



I also have a Luns-Pro digital F which is smaller and good but slower to use. For spot metering I have the Pentax V.

For camera mounted I have Voitlander and Keks meters.

 

[ped]