Sekonic L358?

Vtec44 · Sep 17, 2011

Anyone with experience with this light meter unit? How good is it for measuring multiple flashes?

Overread · Sep 17, 2011

*moving to equipment subsection*

KmH · Sep 17, 2011

Vtec44 said:
Anyone with experience with this light meter unit? How good is it for measuring multiple flashes?

Lots of people have experience with that meter. It is an industry standard light meter.

The L-358 has a place you can insert a PocketWizard trigger so you can trigger strobes from the metering position (subject, or background).

It's not often you'll want to meter more than one strobe at a time.

Big Mike · Sep 19, 2011

Just about every pro photographer that I personally know, has an L358. As mentioned, it's pretty much an industry standard.

Minolta flash meters used to be pretty popular as well...but I don't think they are made anymore, since Minolta got out of the photography game.

pgriz · Sep 19, 2011

Got it when I got serious about off-camera flash. Makes setting up multiple flashes with varying ratios pretty straightforward, along with balancing the flash exposure with ambient. It's the meter I used to determine the amount of flash power to use to get the proper amount of fill in Keith's tread that I kinda hijacked. In my experience, I would set the power levels of each flash (assuming we are using multiple flashes) separately, and verify the contribution flash by flash. Then once all are set at the correct power settings, at the right distance from subject, etc., I'd take a final reading of all the flashes firing at once, to verify the exposure. After that, it's mainly adjusting the location of the flashes or the modifiers to get the amount of shadow, fill, and wrap-around that I'm looking for, and that last step has to be done using the camera. The ability to "integrate" several flash exposures is a neat idea, but I haven't had to use it.

ghache · Sep 19, 2011

its the best unit for the money.

c.cloudwalker · Sep 19, 2011

Big Mike said:
Just about every pro photographer that I personally know, has an L358. As mentioned, it's pretty much an industry standard.

Minolta flash meters used to be pretty popular as well...but I don't think they are made anymore, since Minolta got out of the photography game.

Minolta meters were more than "pretty popular," they were the standard. Sekonic has replaced Minolta as the standard in the studio today and that is what I use.