Good light meter for portraits/food work

[gvpics]

<p>Hi ,<br />I want to buy my first light meter - mostly for shooting portraits, food and outdoor work. For portraits I mostly use continuous lighting. It would be nice if I can get an incident,reflective and flash meter all in one. My budget is ideally in the $300 range but I can go upto $500 if there is a real advantage.<br />I have been reading about it but am really confused. I would appreciate your suggestions on good (and hopefully inexpensive) light meters. Thanks in advance for your responses.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>The Sekonic L358 is a favorite. Excellent incident meter with good support for various flash metering scenarios. It can also work as a refective meter, but if you need it to be a narrow <em>spot</em> meter (say, 1 degree), you'd have to purchase an accessory. Speaking of accessories, you can also fit it with an inexpensive transmitter module so that it can talk to PW radio triggers when you want to meter flash without having to use the on-camera transmitter to fire things - quite handy in the studio or when handling the complex process of rigging a well lit food shot.</p>

[gvpics]

Thanks Matt. Can you elaborate on "narrow spot metering"? When would you use that?

[Matt Laur]

<p>You'd use it when you don't have a camera with spot metering ... which isn't very often, these days. Something like a one-degree spot meter would be used to get a reflective reading off of a small area of a scene that it's not convenient to walk over to with an incident meter.<br /><br />But you have to know something about <em>what</em> you're metering (in terms of how reflective it is, and what its tone is) whenever you use a reflective meter. That's why in-camera metering is sometimes wrong - because it can't magically know what the reflected light is reflecting <em>from</em>, and assumes an 18% gray non-glossy surface. Same with a handheld spot meter. It has no idea at what you're pointing it. Any time you use reflective metering, you need to use a lot of light/surface experience along with it. For portraits and food, an incident meter is far more useful - both for ambient and flash metering.</p>

[mark_t5]

<p>i would ask myself if you really need that lightmeter..i mean its good to have but how much do you need it...</p>

<p>i only say so cuz i have a l358...and i can't remember the last time i actually used it..seems almost a waste of money nowadays.</p>

[kevin_delson]

<p>Uh oh!....</p>

<p>Mark...Several of us had this (ahem) discussion some time back.<br>

FWIW; I agree with you.</p>

<p>"Not that there's anything wrong with using one." :)<br>

I did. Up to about 8 years ago.</p>

[pete_s.]

<p>I have a little L-308s that I use to set up lights with before even having a subject to shoot. I meter towards the light sources.</p>

<p>Sometime I would like a reflective spot meter for flash though. Mostly to check background reflectivity. Another drawback of the L-308s is that you can't calibrate it.</p>

<p>Can't put an integrated pocketwizard in the L-208s either but that is not such a big deal as I just take one with me when metering.</p>

 

[ricd]

<p>Interesting discussion that has been discussed to death. There are neither clear winners nor losers only very good opinions for an against.</p>

<p>Here is mine: Being as my preference is for incident readings I use my L-358 almost all the time. Rarely do I rely on the DSLR reflective meter. When I do I shoot manual mode adjusting left or right of center.</p>

<p>Yes, I used to shoot chimp, shoot chimp, all day obtaining good results however, for me it was not repeatable, not as fast, and doesn't help me with light ratios. Coming from the world of film I have been shooting digital since 2001 becoming quite a digital only fanboy. The past two years I've returned to film and love it. Maybe it is because of film for me a light meter is indispensable.</p>

<p>Yes, I recommend a light meter, the same as having a spare tire in your trunk (when was the previous time you used your spare). To me it doesn't make sense to do without either item.</p>

<p>That is my way of producing photographs, it works well for me. Of course YMMV.</p>

[ricd]

<p>Interesting discussion that has been discussed to death. There are neither clear winners nor losers only very good opinions for an against.</p>

<p>Here is mine: Being as my preference is for incident readings I use my L-358 almost all the time. Rarely do I rely on the DSLR reflective meter. When I do I shoot manual mode adjusting left or right of center.</p>

<p>Yes, I used to shoot chimp, shoot chimp, all day obtaining good results however, for me it was not repeatable, not as fast, and doesn't help me with light ratios. Coming from the world of film I have been shooting digital since 2001 becoming quite a digital only fanboy. The past two years I've returned to film and love it. Maybe it is because of film for me a light meter is indispensable.</p>

<p>Yes, I recommend a light meter, the same as having a spare tire in your trunk (when was the previous time you used your spare). To me it doesn't make sense to do without either item.</p>

<p>That is my way of producing photographs, it works well for me. Of course YMMV.</p>

[david_henderson]

<p>If you're using a camera with a decent built-in meter - eg a fairly modern slr/dslr then the only reason I can think of to buy a meter is to use incident metering. Anything else and your camera can do it. Furthermore this is the area where incident metering excels, where you can actually meter at the subject . So something like the Sekonic 308/358 should do nicely.</p>

<p>If OTOH you have a camera with no metering or with primitive metering ( eg my Bronica meters average only) then your needs might be more all-embracing and I'd pay the extra for a Sekonic 506/608/558/758/ which feature a good spotmeter any day rather than try to use the wide receptor 358 in reflective mode. Thats true of just about any application, but particularly so with yours where its pretty inportant to be sure where the meter ins getting its reflected values from.</p>