Need your recommendation for a hand held digital light meter

I occasionally shoot film with a couple of old Nikkormat's. I always bring my Minolta Auto Meter IIIf with me but it died recently so I'm looking for an inexpensive digital light meter, don't want to spend to much money for it, couldn't justify the cost for the limited use it would receive.

These days, when many photographers have stopped using hand-held meters, you should be able to find a Minolta IVf used for little money. It's very accurate.

I like Sekonic. For studio and landscape I use the 758 that is both incident and spot. It can be calibrated to your camera to precisely find the clipping points to maximize exposure in your digital work. Do you use spot, incident or both determines what you might want.

I second the recommendation for a Sekonic meter, one with spot and incident metering, and ideally flash metering too. It is a useful tool for both film and digital. I haven't shot film in years, but use my Sekonic meter for setting up multiple flash units, portraits and closeups. For example, I set up one or more large flash units in an auditorium for a large group shot, then trigger them remotely with the meter and check the exposure from the stage. That way faces get exposed perfectly, regardless of clothing, dark foregrounds an backgrounds. I can do it off line so subjects don't have to endure endless test exposures. There are a lot of ways to fool automatic exposure sensors, and a hand held meter helps eliminate those inconsistencies.

Look into the Sekonic 308: flash+incident; AA-powered; deadly accurate; long-running, strong-selling model that's plentiful used. Unless you need/want spot-metering, the 308 hit the price.features sweet spot. Just avoid relics and/or anything that originally ran on mercury batteries that's now touted as operable via battery adapters. Buy the newest you can afford. Given current film and processing costs, cheaping out on a meter is a false economy.

Ee, lad, nowt wrong with my trusty Weston Master V

The Gossen luna pro digital is small and accurate. I found one about 5 years ago in mint condition for 100$. It has reflective and incident capability.

+1 for Sekonic meters--the 308 is a great choice, as are the L 518 and L 718 that I have been using for the last 20 years. All of these run for a long time on AA batteries and have been extremely reliable.

KEH camera has a lot of good shape used low to high end meters from the big name companies that would likely meet your budget for low cost. And they give some assurance it will work.

What about the ones that you can attach to your iPhone? Any good?

Another vote for the Gossen Luna Pro, although the one I have is the SBC model which is not digital. Best meter I've ever had.

Hello everyone. My 40+ year old Luna Pro still is working, the two Weston V's are spot on and now I have a small, Gossen Pilot in each of my CMC camera kits. Working Pilots are $15-20 on the auction site and would be ideal for the seldom used camera person. Aloha, Bill

Get another Minolta. The IIIf is about the least expensive.

Another vote for the Gossen Luna Pro, although the one I have is the SBC model which is not digital. Best meter I've ever had.

They've re-used both the Luna-Pro and Sixtomat names (in different markets) for digital meters, which I would also recommend. Specs vary - some of them also do flash metering, the standard models have an incident dome at 90 degrees to the display, but there are also DigiPro versions with the dome on the front. Here's a current model, the Sixtomat F2: http://www.gossen-photo.de/english/foto_p_sixtomat_f2.php which looks similar to the older Sixtomat Flash I have. I think only the more recent models can display fractional readings in the conventional 1/2 stop and 1/3 stop increments, but all of them are accurate to and can display 1/10 stops.

Another vote for the Gossen Luna-Pro. Even though I don't use mine often anymore, I thoroughly trust its incident light measuring capabilities.