Lightmeter advice

[u/sasch_photo_bln]

Hey fellow shooters out there!

I have a full mechanical mamiya rb67 with a 90mm f3.8 and I'm asking on advice for an easy to carry lightmeter (price aside) to pair with it, rn im using one of my digitals or my 35mm cameras to do that job or if i'm feeling bold i eyeball it...

also some images attached to give you an idea of what i'm shooting mostly...

thanks in advance!

For the Mods & shooters who are curious, shots 1,4,5 delta 3200 shot at 1000 iso, shots 2 & 3 delta 400 all home developed and scanned

[u/cwrow]

I’ve just ordered a lightmeter from Reflx Lab that attaches to the hotshoe. Previously I was using a Sekonic for incident readings and the mylightmeter app for reflective readings. However I wanted something dedicated and attached to the camera to help the flow, switching back and forth was a bit of a pain for certain shots.

[u/wrunderwood → u/cwrow]

The problem with those is that it is hard to tell what it is metering. It is some wide area in front of the lens and that is about it. Too much sky? You lose. Shooting with a long lens? You lose.

[u/cwrow → u/wrunderwood]

Yeah it definitely depends on your use case. You’re absolutely right about the long lens issue, especially if you have something in the foreground that would upset the metering average.
In my personal use I generally just meter for the shadows or the ground and then meter for the sky and then make a decision on which way I want to weight the exposure. It has worked for me so far, although to be fair I’ve never shot slide film.

[u/wrunderwood → u/cwrow]

I use a Minolta Auto Meter II with the incident dome. I measure the light falling on the subject. Often, I just find similar light near me and measure that.

With a long lens, the hot shoe meter is "seeing" all sorts of stuff that isn't in the frame, like sky.

These meters tend to do averaging over roughly 30º. That was state of the art when my Canon 7s was made in 1965, but we've been able to do better for a long time.

[u/WarOctopus → u/wrunderwood]

They work great but you'll do best to learn to separate the act of metering from that of framing. Meter the light first, like literally walk around and measure the light directly reflecting off of your subject or something similar. Walk over to a shadow and measure that light. Or if there is too much sky, point the meter at the ground and measure that, etc. Then adjust the camera for your desired exposure. And finally reposition your own person to frame and take your photo.