The old light meter problems.

Grandpa Ron · Oct 11, 2022

I decided to see how much variation there was between a couple of old light meters I have, and a light meter download from the internet to my iPhone.

I have,
1. A Dejur silicone meter from the 1960's or 70's
2. An onboard meter attached to my Yashika TLR. It is used to manually set the camera controls. it is also a silicone meter.
3. I recently downloaded a free light meter/spot meter from the internet. I selected the overall view rather than the spot view.

The results we a bit confusing,
In the shade - The two silicone meters we were with-in one stop, the phone meter was three stops under.
In a mix of shade and sun - All three meters were within 1 1/2 stops of each other.
In the sun - There was a variation of 3 stops between the phone meter and silicone meter readings.

As one might expect if I use the "spot" feature on the phone meter I could get a wide range of reading depending on the object the spot was aimed at. Since I did not have a good method for using the older meters as spot meters, I chose to ignore the Zone method for now; in favor of the overall view metering of the past.

My question is, "Is a 3 stop difference between meters normal because of the view angle?"

cgw · Oct 11, 2022

This recalls the old saying that a man with one clock always knows the time. A man with more is never sure.

With respect, I'd shop for a quality new/used incident meter. Sekonic makes some of the best in a fairly wide price range. Many sold and still sell well, so the used market usually has a selection of models. With current film and processing costs, it's expensive to discover that a working meter isn't necessarily an accurate meter. YMMV, as always.