I was wondering if they are a good investment? I was thinking about getting a nice seikonic Light meter!! Any feed back would grealty be appreciated.

Considering:

- the latitude for exposure error for digital is +/- 1/3 of a stop (translation: you need to be dead on or you will see a dramatic shift in your exposures.

- your in-camera meter uses a relfective metering system so it can be easily fooled in to exposing for something that can result in a under/over exposure.

- Most of the data for an images in toward the right end of a histogram, so it's in your interest to "expose to the right" but not to the point where you blow out highlight details. See
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutor … rams.shtml
and
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutor … ight.shtml

Doing this will ensure that you will also have great shadow detail.

With just these three consideration the one tool that can help you with achieving these objectives is a light meter. How? A calibrated light meter will give you an incident reading which which take into account the light hitting the subject not reflected back to the camera. Also it will not be fooled by the light composition of the shoot (for example shooting a subject in front of a window inside on a sunny day). Also the meter reading will give you a great starting point to use for exposing to the right and you can then use the camera's histogram to watch for blown highlights (Canon camera had a blinking area for blown highlights). I would also encourage you to shoot RAW files to give you maximum flexibilty for the images that you capture if your workflow can incorporate the extra work needed when using RAW files.

Hope this helps.

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Sekonic L 358 best bang for your buck!

i would like to thank you for your feed back!! i guess i might just go out and get one today!!

I have the Minolta V...Does all I ever need it to do. The Sekonic does have more features though.

I've got a Sekonic L-558R.........it's got so many goodies on it.  I am in love with this thing.  It's my new best friend on shoots.  Haha

i have a minolta V...it does what i need it to do..is very reliable...i had a couple of sekonics a few years ago and had some reliability problems...the newer ones may be fine though...havent looked at meters since i bought the V ..i guess i have had it about 5 years now

Possibly a piece of gear

you will put in the pile of

"gear you hardly use"

If you are shooting Canon a better investment, in my opinion, is the new 580ex
flash. Now that is a piece of equipt you will use everyday.

( you might say " I have a flash already", thats what I said with my 550ex.
Since getting the 580ex, it is so much better that now my 550ex is in the
"pile of gear never used")

with todays digital camera menus, white balance options and raw options, i doubt i could even find my light meter.
in studio i cord to a monitor and use it to dial myself in.

I use a Sekonic meter and Milonta color meter daily. I do not like to shoot without consulting them.

A spot meter for zone system work with a Wallace Expo disk to convert it into an incident light meter. My zone VI Pentax analogue meter is fine and reliable. I have a Gossen flash meter for the studio. I've had them both for 25 years of flawless operation. Nowadays there are even a couple of combo meters out there too that do everything.