Sekonic light meters

C

chocblu

Member
hey all,

After reading the post on light meters pros and cons, been thinking about getting a light meter. Ive got a project coming up that im gaffering on, and will alot of the time be workig one step ahead of my DOP, so getting an idea of exposure and so forth without a camera is necessary.

so with that in mind,

1. in this case would a light meter be handy, or is tehre anything else besides and extra camera that would help with this?

2. Had a look at a few and can get a cheap Sekonic L-758D. Has anybody used this? ive had a look at a few reviews, and it says it can be user calibrated, which i ussume would be a good thing given how the HVX/HPX have multiple ISO etc.

3. If the sekonic isnt that good can you suggest any others?

Cheers

Mark
 
Lots of different opinions on the subject and much depends upon the background of the person and whether they've really come from filmmaking or photography using real film. Video people many times use other types of equipment like scopes. I have a Sekonic L758 Cine which is a very common one that many around here favor. The D model would certainly work fine for you though.
 
A logical next question would be "what is spot and what is incident?"

Incident mode: Great for measuring light falling on a subject. If you're in a controlled situation like a studio, or outdoors but your subject and camera are close to each other. You'll typically use incident light mode to measure the light falling on the subject. Its usually like a little sensor on the meter (called a "lumisphere" on the sekonic) that you aim in the direction of the camera while standing at the position of the subject. On the Cine model (maybe others too) the lumisphere can retract and come out for what they call "3d light measurement" or not. You typically use 3d (or extended) mode when measuring the light off of people, buildings and other objects. Retracted lumisphere mode is when you meaure the light off of something like a piece of paper or something flat--like for closeups of documents.

Spot mode: Great for what's reflected from a subject. There's a scene that's far away and you need to hold as much detail in it as possible (and you can't go there to measure light because it is so far away) then you use spot mode where you look through the spot finder of the lens at your subject in the distance (the classic example is mountains in the distance) and measure the light on it. This mode is also used for objects that emit light like light bulbs or translucent objects like stained glass.
 
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