hi. new guy again. thanks to everyone for posting helpful information. i am learning quite a bit from this forum, as well as reading as much as i can. my question is : what is a good light meter to get? i dont know a lot about them, except that they read light. i am attempting to familarize myself with the zone system, so what would be an appropriate meter ( new, used, certain brand name?). thanks for all the help. take care. Jerry

-- Jerry Hazard (hazard01@earthlink.net), February 26, 2000

Answers

A great meter to get, as I am just discovering myself, is the Seikonic L508. I just bought one a while ago, have used it twice for shoots, and have been playing with it non-stop. It does everything you could ever want, and is quite intuitive. It's kinda steep though, at $600Cdn...

-- shawn gibson (SeeInsideForever@yahoo.com), February 26, 2000.

The Minolta IIIF is a wonderful meter if you just need the basics. The "F" version has flash metering in addition to ambient. They are frequently sold used on Ebay for about $120. The other Minolta meters are well respected too. They are primarily incident type and if you want reflective metering (the kind that your camera already uses) you can buy a cheap adapter. The IIIF is one of the lowest cost digital meters with consistent accuracy.

But if you are planning on using the zone system you should probably get a 1 degree spot meter that does reflected and incident, flash metering. Using and packing multiple meters is a pain, so get one that will do all that you need it to do. If you can afford it Shawn's recommendation of the Seikonic L508 is very good.

-- Jim Strutz (jimstrutz@juno.com), February 26, 2000.

Learning the Zone system is an excellent way to learn about exposure, but unless you are shooting sheet film (large format) and doing the developing and printing yourself, you won't use the Zone system in its full methodology.

Nevertheless, it's a good way to understand your exposure decisions even when you are shooting 35mm. Your question leads me to think that you should (1) do a lot more reading about use of exposure meters, and (2) start with a decent, inexpensive, analog (dial, not digital) meter. The analog dial gives you more information for *learning* exposure. I personally selected an updated version of the Gossen Luna Pro model that I used back in the early 70's. A used Luna Pro will go for $100 or less on eBay. It's an established workhorse from a company that stands behind it's product.

-- Jeff Polaski (polaski@acm.org), February 28, 2000.