Digital light meter.

[Bob McCarthy]

Light meters calibrate to middle grey (18%).

Digital cameras calibrate to prevention of highlight clipping, a moving target at times.

So, it might match or it might not depending on the conditions.

Scene selection also dramatically impacts a digital camera and therefore the correct settings.

If your camera offers "raw" that is the lowest contrast and a reasonable match to the DR of a negative given the limitations mentioned above.

I have a manually exposure capable P&S that gets me in the ballpark for really low light (Canon G12) but in daylight it can be fooled easily and my spot meter is much more accurate as to what shows up on film.

I found my film Nikons (F5) more accurate than my digital Nikons (D2x) for use as a meter, especially with transparency film.

bob

[Andrew O'Neill]

A couple of well-known photographer friends use a digital camera for their light meter. They are "morally opposed" to using a real meter

That's funny. I could understand someone being morally opposed to using a digital camera as their light metre, but an actual hand held one?? Stupidity, if you ask me.
I know a guy who uses his digital camera, but he calibrated it to his system, and gets decent results.

[Jeff Bannow]

That's funny. I could understand someone being morally opposed to using a digital camera as their light metre, but an actual hand held one?? Stupidity, if you ask me.
I know a guy who uses his digital camera, but he calibrated it to his system, and gets decent results.

The silly thing is that they take those negs, scan them in and spend dozens of hours in photoshop to correct the problems.

[engl]

Light meters calibrate to middle grey (18%).

Actually, meters are calibrated to 12% gray. There is an article about this here:
http://www.bythom.com/graycards.htm

It is mentioned in several other places as well, such as Beyond The Zone System.

[engl]

A couple of well-known photographer friends use a digital camera for their light meter. They are "morally opposed" to using a real meter.

The result - all of their negs are consistently underexposed. Thin shadows, ugh. It's really too bad. My opinion - use a real meter.

I know a guy that uses a hand held meter and gets uneven exposures. Does this make hand held meters bad?

Any meter that is consistent when operated correctly can be used to get exactly the desired exposure every time (presuming it is of the type you want, if you need a spot meter, you need something that can work like one). Of course, you need to know your tools, and how they interact with the rest of your workflow.

[Andrew O'Neill]

Of course, you need to know your tools, and how they interact with the rest of your workflow.

...and that's it in a nutshell.

[Preston]

engl & Andrew: +1

I prefer using a handheld digital spot meter because I work primarily with color transparency film.

--P

[walter23]

What do you mean by thin?
I used my 35mm DSLR to meter for my 4x5 negs for my first time in my life to shoot LF, it worked fine, just i give that LF say about 1-2 stops more due to DR and large area of the film size so it will take light almost more than 35mm DSLR, maybe some will say that both formats will see same amount of the light under same settings, but i just took a risk and exposed less about 1-2 comparing to DSLR metering.

I don't think it has to do with film size; exposure is sort of an area-independent measurement - afterall, a small sensor is equivalent to a cropped portion of a large sheet of film. Each unit of area has to get the same amount of exposure regardless of film format (otherwise 35mm 100 ISO film like FP4+ would be rated lower than the same film in 4x5...). But there might be slight differences between actual & reported apertures on lenses, actual vs. theoretical digital ISO, etc. And most importantly of course, film (perhaps other than high contrast slide film) can take a lot more exposure to get shadow details whereas digital has to be exposed somewhat less to avoid blowing out highlights.

I'd say if you meter with your DSLR just add a stop for good measure if you're shooting negative film. For transparencies the exposures should be pretty close.

[walter23]

A couple of well-known photographer friends use a digital camera for their light meter. They are "morally opposed" to using a real meter.

The result - all of their negs are consistently underexposed. Thin shadows, ugh. It's really too bad. My opinion - use a real meter.

It just occurred to me what issue might be at fault. I just mentioned that digital must maintain highlight detail (once the sensor meets the maximum exposure threshhold it simply cannot store any more information and the highlight is blown)... and so a lot of DSLRs use matrix / evaluative metering modes which analyze the scene and expose to keep the highlights from blowing. Perhaps switching the DSLR to "center weighted average" or spot metering with the spot function if available would get around this? I know that if I shoot center-weighted averaging mode (which I prefer because it gives more control while not being as finicky for digital snapshottery as spot metering would be) and I'm not careful, I blow highlights on the DSLR, which would be reigned in by the "intelligent" / algorithmic metering programs.

[Alan Davenport]

So I'll have to go back to my Luna Pro. What meters do you use????

Good decision. Me, I use my Luna Pro F. The only thing it might lack (and that's only if I decide I need it) is that tiny 1 degree spot reading.

As for accuracy, analog meters are MORE accurate than digital meters. Why would anyone choose digital?