Old light meter question.

[domromer]

I'm looking for the old fashioned hand held light meters. The kind where you line up the needle and shot all the combinations that can be used.

Can you still get these? Are they cheap? Accurate?

We have some electronic ones at school and they are such a pain in the ass.

I just want a basic incident light meter.

 

[usayit]

Sekonic still makes them brand new:

http://www.sekonic.com/products/products.asp?ID=2

no experience with it though....

I personally would stick with either the digital ones or the get a voigtlander VC II.



Its going to be a little difficult to find an accurate cheap vintage lightmeter. Many used selenium cells which degrade over time. I went to a camera swap and tested a bunch against a digital one. Of about 5 I compared, only this one seemed to be accurate:

I still use it but I forgot off the top of my head what model.

 

[Helen B]

I have one of the little Sekonic L-208 meters that usayit mentions. They are good, simple ambient light meters, and they are lightweight and compact. They aren't particularly sensitive, however. The spec says that they read to Ev 3 at ISO 100. That's not so bad.

A little more upscale is the L-398A.
That is a better meter, though one stop less sensitive in incident mode. It is bigger and heavier, but the shape of the dome makes it better at taking side and back light into account. The L-208 has a very shallow dome.

There are plenty of good old analogue meters available second-hand. One of my favourites is the Profisix SBC. I think that it is called the Luna Pro SBC in the USA. This is bigger than the first two I mentioned, but a lot more sensitive (Ev -8 at ISO 100). It takes PP3 9 V batteries.

Best,
Helen

 

[jcolman]

I've got an old Sekonic that I bought nearly 40 years ago. It still works like a champ! I rarely use it these days but it does come in handy when I'm prelighting a set and I don't have my camera powered up to see the image.

Oh...and you can still purchase these for around $150 iirc. I bought one a few years ago for a nephew who was just starting film school.