Recommend a cheap, small, & reliable meter anyone?

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I'm looking for a cheap (<$100), small (shirt pocketable), and reliable meter to use with my non-metered camera. I'd prefer one with selenium diodes so I don't have to use batteries, but battery powered ones will do as well. What meter do you use?

-- Ron Gregorio (gregorio@ksc.th.com), December 03, 2000

Answers

No question: Gossen Pilot 2. Brand-new, $85 at B&H; doesn't need a battery; measures incident and reflective; weighs about 1.5 ounces (3 ounces in the very well-designed hard case). Mine is dead accurate.

-- John Kuraoka (john@kuraoka.com), December 04, 2000.

Two by Sekonic. There's the venerable Sekonic L398M, descendant of the Norwood Director, selenium-powered, analog 'readout,'and probably available used for $100.The Sekonic 308 is a tiny, flash-incident- reflective reading gem with large-ish digital readout that's probably not available used for your price.Like 'em both, though the 308 gets out more.Sekonic has a new meter, the 208(?)that might be worth a look, too.

-- Gary Watson (cg.watson@sympatico.ca), December 04, 2000.

I picked up a nice Gossen Luna Pro for well under $100. It takes batteries. I happen to have a good number of mercury cells so that is no problem, but for $18 you can get an adapter to use silver oxide cells available at many places.

I later picked up the spot meter attachment. Pretty neat, it does a 15 degree and 7.5 degree spot. Not a REAL spot meter, but it helps.

-- Terry Carraway (TCarraway@compuserve.com), December 06, 2000.


A Gossen Pilot or a nice condition Zeiss Ikophot. Both are selenium. In both cases make sure you calibrate them against a known correct meter - in a camera or a separatemeter. They are both easy to calibrate.

-- Anthony Brookes (gdz00@lineone.net), December 20, 2000.

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