Review of Sekonic Multimaster L-408

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A Review of the <a href="http://www.sekonic.com/Products/L-

408.html">Sekonic Multimaster L-408</a>

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<p>

This is quite a nice meter. It measures ambient or flash light in

reflected, incident, and balanced metering modes. It has a 5-deg

spot, and the lumispere can be raised or lowered for incident or

balanced light modes.

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<p>

After I read the manual, the meter is pretty easy to use. The mode

button toggles between ambient light and two flash modes. The

F/EV/MULTI button toggles between apeture and shutter priority, and

in the flash mode it toggles between regular and multi-strobe modes.

When the meter is set to shutter priority, it can store three

measurements and show a fourth on the display.

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<p>

The memory mode is as close as this thing is going to ever get to a

<a href="http://www.zonevi.com">Zone-VI</a> modified spotmeter. For

general use, I would make an incident light reading. That will give

me a general, mid-range value. Then I would switch to the reflected

light mode.

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The memory stores values for the modes seperately. There can be

three values for reflected light, three for incident, and three for

balanced light. That's nine values in the meter. An F-stop range is

displayed at the bottom of the meter window when the meter is in

shutter-priority. When the meter button is pressed, the

approximation mark indicated by the meter reading is left in place on

the F-stop scale. E.g., if the meter reads f5.6 @ 1/125, a mark will

appear over 5.6 on the bar.

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Now I have a starting value. The 5-deg. spot is quite narrow, but

I'm spoiled on the 1-deg. Pentax spot. Nevertheless, it is quite

usefull. I meter the highest value in the scene, and press the

memory button. A mark is placed on the f-stop range. I then meter

the darkest value, and again press the memory button. Now I can

easily see the general range of the scene.

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I bought the meter for its flash measurement capablities, and yes, it

is really nice. The memory mode allows me to store different

readings for multiple strobes. I can use all of the ambient modes in

the flash mode. The meter can either trigger the flash, or the flash

can trigger the meter reading. I can use the flash with the 5-deg.

spot to measure reflected values on various objects. Once I had a

black hat become a black hole. Not anymore!

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<p>

Am I glad I bought it? You betcha! (I only had to replace the half-

dead battery that came with it, but what the hey.)

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Just a few more observations from another satisfied L408 owner:

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If you have medium- to large-sized hands, the meter fits into your

hand perfectly; the buttons are easily reached and activated.

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The Seconic is lightweight; it weighs slightly less my old LunaPro

even though it has many more features.

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The L408 measures light levels in tenths of a stop, so with an

auxiliary lens, it makes a functional densitometer.

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And, finally, when you need to replace the battery, it's very cheap

and easy to do--it's powered by a single AA battery.

I've been using the L-408 for about two years. My only complaint is

that the 5 degree spot is much too large to be of any use except on

large, homogenous patches, like a blue sky. Also, it took me a while

to get it calibrated, as it was underexposing exactly by 1/2 stop

(another L-408 user on the MFD had exactly the same amount of

underexposure with his, which leads me to believe it's more than a

coincidence). The spot on my 6x6 slr (1% of the viewscreen) is much

finer, so I find I often use that as the spot meter and the L-408 as

the ambient meter. I do like the memory with aperture bar display on

the bottom, which gives a visual display of where the highlights and

shadows fall. Since I use on-camera TTL flash, I haven't had a use

for the flashmeter yet. I would recommend the L-508 simply because

the spot is adjustable to 1 degree, so it's more useful.

Even though this meter is touted as being water resistant, etc.,

etc., I don't think of it as an outdoor meter. I would have bought

something with a 1-deg. spot if I didn't have my Pentax spotmeter.

The 5-deg spot is adequate for the studio work I want it for.

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The meter will also read light in EV values. However, these values

are not independently absolute, they are affected by the set film

speed. There is a chart in the back to convert from EV to Lux, and

EV to cd/m2.

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As a meter for Zone system photography, it's a stinker compared to a

Zone-VI modified meter. My Spotmeter V allows me to immediately see

range and f-stop-to-shutter speed. The L-408 will only give half the

picture in one mode. I would love to see shutter speed range

displayed against F-stop range.

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The way I meter for the Zone system is that I first figure out what f-

stop I neet to use. Second, I pick out the luminance values of the

scene and figure what range I have. Third, I select a matching

shutter speed. The L-408 would require me to sort of work backwards,

so I consider it to be adequate for the Zone system.