I recently had the opportunity to work with a professional lighting set-up for portrait photography: monolights, softboxes, nice background, etc. Needless to say, it's easy to see why the pro's use this type of arrangement and the results were quite pleasing. So, of course, I want one.

One thing I'm having trouble finding is a good source of information about flash meters. There are plenty of them on the market. Some can remember several readings in memory, some can handle multiple flash readings for a single scene, some digital, some analog readouts, all fairly expensive. Are these features important? Anyone with strong opinions regarding one brand over another?

Thanks.

-- Don Karon (dkaron@socal.rr.com), December 15, 2000

Answers

Minolta IV, Sekonic 408's, Gossen's Luna Pro F... to name a few. All the bells ect. aren't necessary but handy once you get going. Let's say your shooting a product or some setup. Your strobes will only give you f11... multiple pops (opening the shutter in a dark studio and popping 2, 4 or 8 times) will give you the apeture you need to render everything in focus. Two pops will give you f16, 4 pops will give you f22 and 8 pops will give you f32. I do caution you when doing multiple pops, reciprocity will come into play eventually! At work, I have the Seconic 408 and it does everything I need in the corporate situation. At home I have the Gossen Luna Pro F. It's great also but there is no sych socket. Just a little more work but it still works great. Remember, lightmeters are just a necessary tool in our world. The easier (read more things in the meter) the meter, the easier your job will be. Cheers

-- Scott Walton (scotlynn@shore.net), December 18, 2000.

I bought the Polaris unit because it was the cheapest. I paid about $150 for it new. It works well, works as regular and flash meter, incident, or diffused metering. It has regular flash mode, or will tell you the number of "pops" to use.

If your just looking for the basics, it's hard to beat. If you want a "does everything" meter, then you can look at the others. Brace yourself for the price tag, though.

-- Charlie Strack (charlie_strack@sti.com), December 18, 2000.

Try reading the reviews at www.photographyreview.com. All the majors are evaluated there. Good luck.

-- jorge andrada (glamour@mozcom.com), January 11, 2001.