Hand held Light meter using a Raspberry pi.

TBH I find the use of something like a Raspberry Pi for an application like this a bit overkill but I guess for convenience of design and construction it is an obvious way to go. I do have a real soft spot for analogue electronics though.
 
Looks good and I have a spare Raspberry Pi but no real need for a Light Meter now. Nevertheless, it is tempting as an interesting project.

Dave
 
I might be able to use one of those with my "Pentax Asahi" - oh journalists, don't you just love them for their research and fact-checking abilities!
 
MrDrizz said:
To be clear this uses the Pi Pico and not the full Pi
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Thanks for the additional information. I originally used my Pi to effectively make my old TV a smart TV and it worked well but I eventually had to replace the TV and no longer need the PI as the new TV is smart,

Dave
 
Crikey, that's a lot of compute power to take a light reading! What's wrong with using a smartphone?
 
Pdk42 said:
Yeah, but the smartphone does more than just a lightmeter, and it's likely always in your pocket. But I take your point.
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I'm not interested in phones at all so I don't know... Can a phone take a light reading?
 
woof woof said:
I'm not interested in phones at all so I don't know... Can a phone take a light reading?
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Yeah, it uses the in-built camera (it's a pretty good light sensor). There's a bunch of apps that are specialist light meters.

e.g. - one of about 20 iPhone apps:

1669718757115.png
 
Maybe it's a matter of opinion and/or geekishness if phones do a good enough job or not.

Googling got me to this guy who thinks phones aren't up to the job...

kw-engineering.com

Don’t ‘Phone It In’: Why Smartphones Are Poor Substitutes for Light Meters - kW Engineering

There are dramatic differences between smartphone light meter apps and standalone light meters when used in the lighting world. As a lighting professional, I’ll show you how and why leaving this unitasker at home can have serious implications.
kw-engineering.com kw-engineering.com
 
Well, I can't say that I've used any of them in earnest. With digital cameras (and not using flash), light meters are rather pointless. There's no better meter than the sensor and over/under indicators or the histogram!
 
Interesting, if you have time to make, to use for a camera without a meter, but can't see how it can beat my film camera with memory for shadows and high lights also with spot metering erm but hey my camera can't do incident light readings o_O .
 
It's one of those situations where knowing your gear/film and having a consistent process matters more than the absolute accuracy of the equipment. I've compared a smart phone app with my light meter and depending on the conditions they can give fairly different results but who can say which one is right?
 
Excellent, love the people constantly tinkering and innovating and soon hopefully we will have somesort of 3d printed large format shutter - im praying to the film gods

I also thought it would be possible to attach some kind of arduino and mechanial actuation device to a copal shutter to get spot on shutter speeds every single time
 
sirch said:
It's one of those situations where knowing your gear/film and having a consistent process matters more than the absolute accuracy of the equipment.
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Agree and with the advantage of film latitude....lets face it most of us filmies don't even know if our shutters speeds are accurate, then manufacturing tolerances of lens apertures and film ASA could cancel out or add up.
 
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