Photography Thailand Forum

[David Procter]

I want to purchase a light meter! I hope to use it for general purpose walking about and studio work and to heighten my appreciation of light in general. Budget is around 10000B. Any recommendations

[Marc Schultz]

Sekonic L-358 is the one you want, but if you are shooting mainly digital like I am I think you will find you hardly ever use it. If you want to learn about light I am not sure it will teach you much except shutter speeds. Since shutter speeds are mainly just numbers I think maybe you are better off spending that money on books about lighting so you understand more about different types of lighting rather than something to measure it which your camera does a good job of doing anyway. Use historgrams and your cameras LCD to measure the light and figure out times when your camera's light meter may be off so you can compensate for it on exposure and that is all about you need. I still carry mine, but for my assistants to use because they feel better about having one around. Just my thoughts on it in general.

[David Procter]

Thanks very much for the information.
I'd like to learn from as many sources as possible (including books!) and I'd also like to shoot with film in the near future (before you can no longer). The lure of Kodak TriX and using a dark room is something I'm desperate to try out.
I'm also just using trial and error to get the right exposures with the lights i have borrowed at the moment.
I can see your point Marc and I'd need to get a meter that was better than the camera's internal one(!)
Thanks again

[Marc Schultz]

Not entirely. If you wanted to use a meter to meter studio lighting you would need a separate light meter. The camera's built in meter has no way of metering light that is not static as it only meters ambient light that it can see when you press the shutter half way down and before the picture has been taken. Since studio lights are strobes that only trigger when the shutter is pressed all the way, you need a handheld light meter which can be set in advance to meter studio flashes when they go off.

There is no reason why they can't build that function into cameras to meter light as it synchronizes from a studio flash as I see it, but I guess they want to let the light meter companies make a bit of money.

When I am shooting in the studio with 4-5 lights at as time I often use it to meter individual lights coming from different directions. But you can still get away with shooting in a studio without a light meter by just doing test shots of the overall lighting and looking at the histograms and LCD screen on your DSLR and adjusting lighting power or closing down the aperture until you get the right exposure levels.

Be careful though with the 20D or any of the Canon DSLR LCD screens because they tend to exaggerate highlights on the screen from studio light sources I have found and often the highlights look really strong on the LCD screen when they are actually just right on the computer. If you are not careful you could end up underexposing because the camera often makes you think the highlights are stronger than they actually are.

Hope this helps.

[silverliner]

For your future B&W film shooting any meter with spot reading is the one you need. You should look for the following features: ability of spot measurement (from 1-5 degree), size and ergonomics, ease of use, flash light measurement capability, battery type and finally price.  I myself have a Sekonic L-408 which has both 5 degree spot (for reflective measurement) and flash measurements.  It runs on only single easy-to-find AA battery which lasts for almost a year.  The big numerical readout is pleasing to my ailing eyesight.  A couple of years back, they were plenty in second hand market selling for about 4000-7000 bahts which is O.K. if you can check the accuracy of the used one (and it can be compensated for a fixed over or underexposure reading errors).  I use it alongside a new Sekonic L-308 but I prefer the 408 especially when I was out of studio light setting. 

[David Procter]

Thanks very much for the advice! No doubt I'll have many questions when I actually start using the meter and a studio.