Light meters question

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Nige
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I've been toying with the idea of buying a dedicated light meter, both because my Lubitel has no built-in meter, and also as a backup for my eyes and brain when I'm shooting Sunny 16 (especially if I'm indoors, where I tend to find my eyes always think it's brighter than my camera does!). Is it worth buying a dedicated meter, or will a mobile phone app be good enough? I have an app already which (based on a few quick comparison tests with my digicam's metering) seems to be reasonably accurate.

Thanks.
 
If you're interested I have a brand new Sekonic L-308S for sale. Bought from Dale Photographic in October.
http://www.dalephotographic.co.uk/light-meters/2127-sekonic-l-308s-lightmeter-4962294011345.html

I bought it a few months ago for some product / still life photography but due to space limitations for lighting I've given up on it.
It's been used 2, maybe three times and comes with the remainder of it's 5 year guarantee.

£150 posted.

I was going to put this up in the classifieds along with my lights shortly anyway and happy to post it there if you are interested to keep everything above board.
 
I've only ever used an app on my iPhone and haven't had any issues. I shoot a lot of slide and, even in really bright condition on holiday, had no issues exposing Velvia 50. Whilst a dedicated meter offers more functionality like spot metering and flash support, I personally find the iPhone is enough.
 
I'd get yourself a proper incident meter like the Sekonic above. I find them very easy to use in all lighting situations and unlike reflected light meters, you don't have to worry about light and dark areas fooling them. If you do a lot of very low light shooting, the old Gossen meters such as the Sixtomat are good as they meter down to a very low EV.
 
I do use my phone lightmeter app and it is accurate but now I have a new phone it is actually bigger than my Sekonic L308 meter and much bigger than my now sadly lost L208 Twinmate. I really liked the Twinmate, small, accurate simple.
 
If considering an old Gossen meter such as a Lunasix 3, the mercury type batteries it takes are no longer available. The 'equivalent' modern batteries are a slightly different voltage, which can apparently affect the meter readings. One of the solutions to this is to buy a special adaptor designed to take silver oxide batteries, which fits into the original battery chamber and delivers the right voltage (I have one of these for mine and it seems to work OK). Another solution (for the more electronically minded DIY enthusiast) is to modify the internal electronics of the meter to accommodate SO batteries. Zinc air cells can be used, which are the correct voltage but apparently last less than 12 months when activated; and as two of them are required, it's probably not a particularly cheap long-term alternative?

I have the 'Lightmeter' (advert free) app for my Android phone, it seems to work well on my Sony Experia T phone and must be one of the best £1.99s I've ever spent! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dq.fotometroNa&hl=en_GB I tend to use that most of the time, as it's always with me... a separate light meter (as nice as using a vintage bit of kit may be) is just something else for me to carry around, so I only take the Lunasix with me on dedicated photo trips in cooler weather when I'm wearing a jacket or coat with pockets to carry it in! So think carefully before you buy, how much will you actually use a meter, and is there anything else your money would be better spent on? A nice Yashica 635 TLR instead of the Lubitel 2 perhaps? :) And no, I'm not selling one of mine! :p
 
The phone apps are just a skin over the phone's own camera's metering abilities, so the app will be as accurate as the phone is - ie, for the majority of phones, very accurate indeed. If your phone takes well exposed photos, then so will your Lubitel. Download an app and try it out.

Having said that, if you want to spot-meter or incident-meter, then you'll want a dedicated meter.

Edit: I got an accurate Weston Master V complete with dome from ebay for less than a tenner, but of course you're playing a gambling game with the old ones. I do have a wild-ass-guess-hypothesis that if it comes with a case, no matter how tatty, then it's likely to have been stored in the dark and therefore still work. No idea if it's true.
 
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Thanks all for the replies.

I think I'll stick to the phone app then and maybe look for a good condition old meter on my travels. As much as I appreciate that the Sekonic meters are excellent pieces of kit, they're vastly out of my price range for the amateur level usage I will get out of them. Most of my Sunny 16 estimates have been within an acceptable margin of error anyway. :)
 
Thanks all for the replies.

I think I'll stick to the phone app then and maybe look for a good condition old meter on my travels. As much as I appreciate that the Sekonic meters are excellent pieces of kit, they're vastly out of my price range for the amateur level usage I will get out of them. Most of my Sunny 16 estimates have been within an acceptable margin of error anyway. :)

Wise decision as if using neg film you have a lot of film latitude for exposure errors. For the price of some of these meters you could get three Canon T90s and each one you can select spot metering and also take 8 different spot readings of your subject, hold it in memory and it averages the exposures before you take the shot. Of course not much use if the subject is all coverage in snow ;) but for tricky shots just meter off a grey card (or equivalent) and it would be a lot cheaper than an expensive meter that can take incident light readings.
 
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