Best light meter for under $350

[steve_mareno1]

<p>If you don't use a meter in a studio environment for flash work, any old meter that's accurate should work just fine. If you need something for low light you will need a somewhat more refined meter, but it will come in WAY under your budget. I remember going out shooting w/ another photographer once to do some LF work, which certainly wasn't my thing, and I brought a $30 Sekonic L188 meter. Tiny and cheap. My friend, who was a fervent disciple of Ansel Adams, brought his expensive, big, and heavy Pentax spotmeter. He also used a complicated zone system for exposure that he tried to explain to me, but my eyes just glazed over. We both took identical shots of the same landscapes. He made all these careful readings of shadows and hghlights, computed his zone chart, and came up w/ a definitive reading. I looked at the scene, made some measurements nearby of an area that matched the middle tones of the view, and came out w/ exactly the same exposures. We were shooting 4x5 transparencies, so metering had to be accurate. W/ B&W film work, you have a lot more latitude for "creative" mistakes.</p>

[rodeo_joe1]

<p>A bit of belated advice about the Minolta meters Jeremy. If you don't use it on a regular basis (like daily), then take the battery out between uses. My Minolta IIIF absolutely eats up the quite expensive 4SR44/PX28 battery even when supposedly switched "off". I now keep a little strip of insulating plastic film between the battery and one meter terminal when not in use, and only whip the plastic out to take a reading. Before I did this the battery was dead every other time I went to use the meter.</p>

<p>BTW, I wouldn't worry about the voltage difference between alkaline PX13A cells and proper mercury cells in your old Gossen Lunasix. I adjusted my black Lunasix 3 to take 1.5v cells, and quite honestly the change in accuracy was hardly worth the bother. I think this "problem" is blown out of all proportion and simply substituting 1.5v alkaline cells for the old 1.35v mercury ones works just fine. After all, the B.C. button on the meter will still tell you when the cells have fallen below a useable voltage, and the maximum difference in voltage between the two types of cell is only about 10%.</p>

[jeremy_sutton1]

<p>Thx Rodeo Joe. I had received the Minolta Flash V by the time I saw your response. It requires AA batt, so that is nice for availability and cost. Regardless removing a battery when not in regular use is good practice. It is a very simple light meter to use. I was up and running in minutes.<br>

I need to test my Luna side-by-side with it for my own curiosity. This will certainly tell me if the upgrade was necessary or not.</p>

[larry_miller5]

<p>I would have gone for the Quantum XP or the Gossen Luna-Star F2. Both exceptional accurate meters.</p>