Does anyone use hand-held light meters anymore.

[StuartR]

Just been trolling around eBay, like you do, and came across some old Weston light meters. It put me in mind of my old (and unfortunately long since sold) Weston Euro Master and invercone that I used with my Yashicamat TLR back in the 70's.

IIRC the Weston worked really well and, in addition to the Yashicamat, I even used it with some of my early SLR cameras despite the fact they had built-in meters (which seemed a bit hit & miss at the time). Again IIRC, they use of the meter with invercone was highly recommended when shooting transparency film.

Is there any advantage in using a hand-held meter nowadays I wonder. Do they have a place in the digital world? The Weston range didn't use batteries but a photoelectric cell which means the will possibly still work fine even if they're 30 years old. Some of the prices on eBay look reasonable and I bet they go for a song at boot fairs...

[ash]

Re: Does anyone use hand-held light meters anymore.

I would not no how to use one if I tried but Im sure its not that hard, the metering on modern camera's I beleive is very accurate which deletes the need for such a device.
I think using one with a modern pro dslr would really be a waste of time.

[Bob Ross]

Re: Does anyone use hand-held light meters anymore.

Hi Stuart,
I have a collection of meters, including the Weston. I will occasionally use an incidence meter as a check against what the camera is choosing. What I have run into is that the sensor/ISOs the mfrs use aren't necessarily standard ISOs, so the external meter has to be calibrated to the camera and if you are using two different cameras, there is a lot of switching ISO settings.
Bob

[Stephen]

Re: Does anyone use hand-held light meters anymore.

Just been trolling around eBay, like you do, and came across some old Weston light meters. It put me in mind of my old (and unfortunately long since sold) Weston Euro Master and invercone that I used with my Yashicamat TLR back in the 70's.

IIRC the Weston worked really well and, in addition to the Yashicamat, I even used it with some of my early SLR cameras despite the fact they had built-in meters (which seemed a bit hit & miss at the time). Again IIRC, they use of the meter with invercone was highly recommended when shooting transparency film.

Is there any advantage in using a hand-held meter nowadays I wonder. Do they have a place in the digital world? The Weston range didn't use batteries but a photoelectric cell which means the will possibly still work fine even if they're 30 years old. Some of the prices on eBay look reasonable and I bet they go for a song at boot fairs...

As something to covet and fondle the Weston has to be worth having, bt I can't honestly see a place for them in todays digital world. We now have the ability to easily rake the shot again if its not right first time.

I have a Sekonic all singing all dancing meter, but I only use it now as a flash meter for use when I'm using studio flash lights. I can even manage without the meter for that these days, but I prefer to use one to balance the output from each light. I doubt the Weston could do that though.

[Barr1e]

Re: Does anyone use hand-held light meters anymore.

I remember my late father in law using a light meter and taking several readings before setting the camera. He used it to good effect as he had many pictures that were used by the press and he also won many competitions of note. I think Anne learnt quite an amount from him even taking over the darkroom on occasions.

I hang my head as I never have used one.


Regards. Barr1e

[StuartR]

Re: Does anyone use hand-held light meters anymore.

Fair point Bob. I used auto ISO on my 40D for a while until the novelty wore off (and I found that the lowest ISO it would select on "P" was 400). This could easily lead to mistakes if you were using a hand-held meter!

I'd know how to use one Ash, used one for years, and I accept that they're not really necessary but they used to cause the photographer (well me at least) to take more time over shots and give more consideration to the exposure being set, you made the decision on the aperture / shutter combination - not the meter.

Perhaps it's me, after a longish lay-off from "proper" cameras to pursue other interests when I got my first DLSR it was so easy to stick it on "P" and auto ISO and get pretty good results, say 95% of the time. It's the 5% that weren't right that got me back into using aperture and shutter priority and (rarely) manual. It's strange after all these years that I'm now re-learning how to think about my shots rather than point & shoot.

Plenty of guys and gals on here (especially the pros & semi-pros) will probably have never lost the knack but I sure did and it's nice getting back into the saddle. I reckon a manual meter will be another catalyst in the process, slowing me down and helping me get back to me roots. I can recall forgetting my meter on a few occasions and falling back to an old rule of thumb (I think I've got this right); on a sunny day use f/16 and set the shutter speed at, or close to, the film's ISO speed (or ASA for me then). Either way, IIRC, it worked. If it was overcast just use f/8.

Driving is perhaps a similar case in point, although it has a different outcome for me. After driving an automatic with cruise control why would I even dream of wanting to go back to manual gear changing and get an aching ankle from holding the throttle in the same position for hours on end? Utter madness if you ask me! And Sat Nav rules, you just have to sensible when using it.

Right, that's enough waffling, got to mow the lawns and weed the borders AND the sun's out The grand children are up later today so no doubt the camera will be out too.