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Excellent Light Meter,
This Sekonic L-358 light meter is an excellent meter. I have fallen in love with it. Lots of Today’s 35mm SLR camera meters are TTL Meters (reflected light measurement meters). Sekonic L-358 is such a high precision instrument which measures incident, reflected, flash (cord & cordless). I got great digital photos after I have used the reading on 2 different cameras under normal & Flash lights.
The pictures are great out of your camera and do not require any editing if used properly according to the instructions. I like the built in Memory function to store readings, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, 2 ISO functions, Weather proof Seal, Can include optional radio transmitter + receiver modules to wirelessly trigger flash units, So far Battery Life has been Good. This meter does not use “AA” it uses CR-123A so you will have to always carry one spare with you.
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|My first handheld meter-works great.,
I bought this meter because I bought a manual focus lens for my Nikon D50. This camera body does not meter with the old manual lenses. After a week of using it, I can say it performs well. It offers incident and reflected measurements. However, to switch from incident to reflected, you have to take off the lumisphere and mount the lumigrid. It offers shutter and aperture priority modes. I prefer aperture priority-choose an aperture, and the meter selects a shutter speed. You can choose 2 ISO settings. The meter will stay on ISO 1 until you push ISO 2 for a brief reading. When you let go of the ISO 2 button, it goes back to ISO 1.
The Sekonic L-358 also does flash metering(reflected and incident). This is helpful to me because my D50 will not do TTL flash with my older flash units-Nikon SB-80DX. It has flash corded mode-connect flash and meter with sync cord. It also has cordless flash mode. When you press the measurement button, you will have up to 90 seconds to fire the flash. It will even measure multiple flash bursts. However, it will not read them all if the bursts are too quick. I’d recommend leaving at least 1/2 second between bursts to take a reading. There’s also flash to ambient light ratio readings.
Another reason I chose this model is you can buy optional spot meter attachments for it-1, 5, and 10 degree heads.
It also has many features I’ve never used and probably never will, so I can’t comment on those. Such as wireless radio flash triggering(I think optional accessories are required), memories, averaging of multiple readings, and more.
Something that you should consider-not all lenses transmit the EXACT same amount of light. In theory they should, but that’s not always the case. For example, one of my lenses needs about 1/3-1/2 stop more light than the meter suggests. Another needs about 2/3-1 stop more. And another lens just about agrees with the Sekonic. I think older zooms are more prone to needing more light. If you’re getting underexposed images, run tests and take notes with each lens you plan on using with the meter.
And another thing-it uses a CR123A battery. Those can be hard to find, so carry an extra.
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|Excellent Lightmeter – Great Value Too!,
I purchased this light meter when I got a chance to use a film medium format camera for awhile. It has every feature that I could like and was so good at exposure measurements that I started using it on my Canon 30D digital when the time for the shot permitted.
At first when I purchased it I thought it was so ‘old school’ to have a lightmeter, but I knew I was going to have it to use the medium format film camera I had and I wanted to go with strobes eventually so I was going to need it as well for the best results. I was quite surprised to find out how much of a difference it makes on digital and it pointed out how even a good digital camera can only do so good of an exposure prediction because of color and reflection assumptions it has to make.
If you’ve got to get exposure right on, then get a good light meter. The L-358 is a great light meter for the money.
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|Terrific studio meter for the price,
I have one of these that I use regularly with my studio flash setup.
Inexpensive high-power studio flashes generally don’t work with your camera’s TTL metering system, and when you bring in multiple lights, complex diffusers and so forth, calculating exposure gets to be a challenge. With the Polaris, I setup my lighting the way I want, fire the flashes (either one at a time or all at once), and the meter gives me correct exposure information that’s always 100% spot on. It can also help me achieve certain specific lighting ratios, such as making sure the background is subdued or helping me know one part of my subject isn’t in too-deep shadows – in effect, you just fire the flash a few times, metering all the key parts and noting how far apart the exposures are. For calculating studio flash exposure, the Polaris can’t be beat, especially considering the price.
Of course, these days you can achieve good results with digital cameras by simply taking lots of test exposures…there’s no film cost, and most photographers tend to have a few lighting setups that really don’t vary all that much. This means there aren’t too many exposure combinations, and you can probably home in on it trial and error if you want. Or, you can do it the old-fashioned way by knowing the guide numbers of your flashes and dividing by flash to subject distance. Still, having a meter like the Polaris makes this much faster and more precise, especially if you tend to shoot under lots of varying conditions.
There are also flashes like the Nikon Creative Lighting System that actually do integrate with certain camera metering systems, even when multiple, off-camera flashes are used. These are wonderfully flexible units, but I still find myself using my somewhat old-fashioned (by CLS standards) studio strobes to get the power and light quality I want. There are so many types of flash attachments – big diffusers/soft boxes, snoots, barn doors, gobos, etc etc etc – that just don’t work with the compact flashes Nikon and others make. The Polaris makes using these setups almost as easy as having a TTL flash.
The Polaris can, of course, also be used as a more conventional exposure meter under nearly any condition. Frankly, the meter in most of my cameras are so good under most non-studio flash conditions, I tend to only rarely use it this way.
About the only thing the Polaris doesn’t do is include built-in color temperature metering. This would simplify situations where you have a mix of different light sources and you want to set the white balance for a particular effect.
Otherwise, it’s a small, compact and lightweight unit. It doesn’t seem particularly rugged, but since I tend to wear mine around my neck on a lanyard, I’d rather have lightweight than a unit built like a tank. The display is large and easy to read, even in dim light, and it runs quite a long time on a set of batteries.
Recommended as a low-cost alternative to some of the other more expensive brands.
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|A Valuable Meter at a Great Price,
Customer Video Review Length:: 8:00 Mins
The Polaris SPD-100 Light Meter comes in this simple unassuming box. The packaging is very unassuming. Inside the box the Polaris SPD-100 comes with a carrying case, a lanyard, and a manual.
The meter is a nice size coming in at 2.5 inches wide, 7/8 of an inch thick, and 4 and 11/16 inches tall. The battery door is located on the back. The meter uses a standard AA battery.
When you turn on the meter the first thing the it does is a battery check. It shows this information for about a second. This is nice because if you are about to start a complex and lengthy shoot, you can just change out the battery rather than having to stop the process (model, assistant, etc.) and restart after changing a battery. Also, if the meter does run out of batteries, the meter will save your most recent settings as it does when you turn it off and back on. Another nice thing about this meter is that it automatically turns itself off after 5 minutes of non-use. Some people might not like this, however, it is a nice power saving feature for when you get busy and forget to turn it off.
The Polaris SPD-100 allows you to measure both incident or flash metering and reflective light metering. Reflective light metering is similar to the light metering included in your Digital SLR camera. Incident light metering is the ability of the light meter to measure a light incident such as the firing of the strobe flashes in a studio setup.
To use the reflective metering you first slide the incident sphere to the right until it clicks, exposing the light sensor. Then you press and hold the ISO button while using the adjustment buttons on the side to adjust the ISO to the preferred setting. Then you press the mode button until the ambient light metering mode displays. You can have the ambient metering displayed in F/stop and shutter speed or EV values depending on how you have set this.
You then point the meter in the direction of what you want to meter and press the measurement button. You are then given the reading.
You can also use this meter as an incident light meter for strobes in a studio setting. First you need to slide the incident sphere over the light sensor on the left. Then you adjust the ISO setting. After this you can chose to a corded or cordless flash mode. The corded flash mode uses a PC cord from the meter to the flash. Then when you push the trigger button, the flash fires and the meter takes a reading. If you use the cordless mode then the meter waits for you to fire the flash. When doing this the meter waits for your to remotely trigger the flash. In the video I demonstrate the cordless flash metering with my Nikon SB-900. I then demonstrate the corded PC Sync Flash Meter Mode with a CowboyStudio 180 watt second studio strobe. Watch this part of the video and you will see when a good meter is so important. The SB-900 gave different readings depending on how I set the flash and the Cowboy Studio Strobe gave different readings depending on how intense I set the strobe. The crazy thing was though, that when I adjusted the strobe down 1/2 a turn on the adjustment knob, the strobe intensity did not go down the same amount. Had I not had this meter, I would have not known this. Also, don’t try to just take a bunch of test shots and review them on your camera’s lcd screen. Chances are your LCD screen is way off on color and brightness calibration. Many camera’s LCD screens are brighter than the picture actually is so you can see the photo when shooting in the sunlight. If you rely on the lcd screen to check your exposure, you could easily be underexposing every shot you take!
One down side of the meter is that when in Incident (Flash) Meter mode you can only adjust the flash sync speed or shutter speed and the ISO setting on this meter. There are ten different flash sync speed settings. Then, after you take the reading the meter gives you the F/Stop that goes with the shutter speed. If the reading is in between a full stop the meter will display this on the scale on the bottom the screen. The meter displays this in 1/10th stops. This is helpful for getting the perfect exposure.
You can also use this meter to set up multi-flash situations. This means that you can take a single flash reading, then…
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|Great piece of equipment for the price,
The light meter works great. Love it. Specially for the price. Of course if money is not an issue or you can wait I’d say go for one that gives you temperature in Kelvin. Much more useful. Still this works like a charm. Captured great images both on film and digital using both reflective and ambient measures.
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