Okay so I love this web site. I am beginning to think I could forget college all together. I get more help here than is imaginable. (I love my professor though) I am looking to take an advanced black and whiter class. My professor suggested the above mention meter. Because I plan to do this for a long long time and he says this model is the one I want. It will cost me about three fifty through a student program. I it really worth that much? If so why do the professional eos canon cameras I am looking to get later all have such fancy meters built in????? I have an eos elan (original) now and have been using it for about 4 years. I reallllly like it and have never had problems with the built in meter. What are the benifits of this fancy one??? Thanks for all the time it takes you to answer these questions that might otherwise seem too simple for some....

-- martha goldsmith (oscar@unidial.com), October 10, 1999

Answers

I alsmost forgot. Can I use this type of meter for other formats besides slr 35mm????

-- martha goldsmith (oscar@unidial.com), October 10, 1999.

'Fraid I don't know anything about the specific model you mentioned, but any separate meter provides you with a couple things, depending on design. First you can meter different areas of the scene to better figure out lighting ratios and how to expose to put the tones where you want them. A spot meter is often best for this. You can also take incident readings (how much light is hitting the subject) which don't take into account the reflectivity of the subject. It's like taking a gray card reading. Many meters also do flash readings. You say "never had problems w/ built in meter"- does this mean it has never broken or that your frames are all perfectly exposed? :-) When I went to RIT, they extolled the virtues of the Gossen Luna-Pro. It was about $79 back then, big bucks in '73. I don't know why they were so enamored with it, but I stuck with my old Weston. They hated it, but my exposures were as good any anybody elses. Buy a tool you can comfortably afford AND that you're comfortable with.

-- Conrad Hoffman (choffman@rpa.net), October 12, 1999.

The L-508 does incident, it does reflected, it does spot, it does flash. That is pretty much everything you could ever ask from a meter. The spot is a five degree to one degree zoom. Fixed five degree spots, like that found on the L-408, are pretty useless in the end. One degree spots are much more useful. The L-508 is a very well thought of meter and you could do much worse. $350 is a bargain for that meter. I would go for it. I don't own one personally but I have to carry three meters to get the same functionality. BTW it is very useful for other formats. In fact the bigger you go the more you will need a separate meter.

-- Fritz M. Brown (brownf@idhw.state.id.us), October 12, 1999.