Which Light Meter

[arith]

Does anybody know of any light meter that can measure over 30 secs?

I use my camera metering always on spot because I find it easier, bunging up iso to 800 to take a pic of me with a grey card 30 degrees to the main light, but not higher iso since noise corrupts grey card readings; and then multiply time by 8 to get 100 iso time settings.

Obviously this is limited use and I see exposures in this forum hours long.

[jiro]

Steve, I'm not an expert in this field of long-exposure photography. Having read some books about this subject, most of the guys who wrote these books does not use any light meter. Instead, they based their exposure on trial and error. From their initial data, that is how they adjust their shutter settings based on the "effect" that they want to achieve. Hope this helps. I'm pretty sure the professional ones here can give you a more direct answer.

[Gingerbaker]

What's a light meter?

[Colin Southern]

I use a Sekonic 758DR which is good for 30 minutes, if that helps.

[arith]

yes, it would but it is a bit pricey.

[Black Pearl]

I do quite a bit of night shooting and as above the correct exposure is often down to experience plus some wide ranging trial and error.

As a side note does anyone know if a digital sensor suffers from reciprocity law failure as film does - I'd guess not but I've never checked.

[PopsPhotos]

My old GE 8DW58Y4 goes to 120 seconds.

Pops

[MiniChris]

I think my Pentax Spotmeter goes to 1 hour..I'll check tomorrow. I use the EV scale when doing digital and have just begun to set up a logbook on exposures and noise.

[meltimtiman]

I use a Sekonic 358 light meter whenever I get the chance to do portraits for that almost perfect exposure in a studio but I havent used it on long exposure shots. Maybe we can start a thread about it. Just a thought.

[Colin Southern]

The other thing to keep in mind though is that if one is doing a long exposure around sunrise / sunset then one also needs to allow for the fact that the light levels will change considerably during the exposure, which makes it a lot more "fun"

[arith]

cheers pops; it all looked a bit expensive then I found the Weston Master VI which is a 2 hour meter. Not too far off the light meter I used to have although I can't remember how to use it; found some online manuals though and asa = iso.

A spot meter costs more than my camera, but my first light meter cost £13 which was a lot but it looks like I could get a Weston for about the same price.

But do I need one since the only place I've been requiring more than 30 secs exposure at 100 iso was in a pitch black room.

[MiniChris]

I was way wrong on my Spotmeter as it only goes to 4 minutes...I have a compilation of notes from shooting film on long exposures and have used them as good, base starting points. Having the ability to adjust ISO and color balance per shot is the real advantage to shooting digital...with noise the disadvantage...then again, repricosity failure isn't all that keen either.

[arith]

That's alright Chris; your is over £700 here and would be great for long distance stuff, I was thinking of something a lot cheaper. The Weston Euromaster II goes up to 15 minutes, which gives me hours on high iso setting, working backwards, or the Weston Master 6 goes up to 2 hours.

But like I said: I haven't encountered a situation where I would need that long but I have a remote timer that goes up to 99 hours, doesn't mean I will ever use it though.

[MiniChris]

I paid about $370 US for it seven years ago...they aren't cheap and quite hard to find anymore, but they are dead spot on for dialing in good distance exposures.

[arith]

I would hope so this is second hand and if you look within 6 hours from 1546 GMT, you will see it is £260+ and I expect will get around £500. Don't believe the practically new bit, just looked after. <biggrin>

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PENTAX-DIGITAL...item3364e923cd

I was thinking more 30-150

[MiniChris]

Given the exchange rate of 1.6066 Pound to US. that puts it at $417.71 right now...Dang, I hadn't realized they'd gotten so expensive. If it sells for 500 pounds, that will make it closer to $800 US...almost worth letting go...

[johnvee]

Just jumping in here, I have an old sekonic i used years ago it still works but it measures full stops instead of 1/ 3 stops , can i still use it
i tried but it confused the hell out of me when i compared it with the in camera meter.Yes and light meters are now as much as a new dslr. I'm getting back into shooting after a long while of doing other things.

[arith]

Given the exchange rate of 1.6066 Pound to US. that puts it at $417.71 right now...Dang, I hadn't realized they'd gotten so expensive. If it sells for 500 pounds, that will make it closer to $800 US...almost worth letting go...

It went for $500, probably an investment.

[Colin Southern]

Just jumping in here, I have an old sekonic i used years ago it still works but it measures full stops instead of 1/ 3 stops , can i still use it

Yes. I'd assume that it simply rounds the exposure to the nearest shot, which is probably "close enough" for most situations.

i tried but it confused the hell out of me when i compared it with the in camera meter.

In-camera meters measure reflected light, but make the assumption that what they're metering is medium grey. If it's NOT medium grey then they'll give you wrong settings. (eg a black cat on a black rug will over-expose by around 2 stops, and a polar bear on a snow field will under-expose by about 2 stops. An incident light meter will expose both of these correctly, although I would advise caution in getting the light meter too close to the bear!

[victor]

Johnvee,

Try the following link

http://www.stacken.kth.se/%7Emaxz/files/jiffy.pdf

Down load the file and make on matte photopaper after printing.

Works well for me and saves £ on lightmeters

Regards

David