I need a New lightmeter

[trife86]

I just got into 35mm i got a nice cam / lens (Minolta Rokkor-x 50mm)
Im trying to get some nice night time shots in nyc. Ive seen people use exposure lentghs of over like 5mins. Do lightmeters tell you to hold a exposure that long?
All i ever used is the TTL meter. Id like to get something cheap that will help me figure the exposure i need for nightshots

 

[Christopher Walrath]

You might check out Fred Parker's Ultimate Exposure Calculator. It will get you pointed in the right direction.

 

[Marco Buonocore]

I use a Sekonic L558 for night photography. It's quite accurate, and much more sensitive than either the L508 or L608. However, if I spot meter some dark corner of a scene, the meter can't read it. There are certainly limits to the sensitivity of the cells. I often use the incident meter on a lit spot of the street. Works very well.

The trick to night photos is choosing what to meter. You're going to have to make sacrifices along the way. Some shadows are going to be lost, and a lot of highlights will need burning in. I'd say that's the nature of the beast. When you figure it out, you can get lovely results.

I eventually found that for the subjects that I shoot, I'm usually in the realm of f11 2min, on fuji acros 100 film. That's Toronto street lights. Time Square - I'm sure - is a different animal entirely!

 

[fschifano]

Sorry, but cheap and good for low light don't go together with light meters. I have a Sekonic L-508, and it's pretty good in dark lighting conditions. It might be among the best, with only the newer L-558 besting it. I bought that meter quite a few years ago and it cost about $500 back then. The latest meters in that family are selling for that much and more. Better to use Fred Parker's guide. It's quite good and you'll learn a lot more about light because you'll be forced into being very observant.

 

[thuggins]

If you want to take night shots, you need an OM-2 or OM-4. Olympus invented a method to directly read the actual exposure of the film. This is the only way to guarantee perfect night shots every time.

 

[nemo999]

For GENERAL photography a relatively inexpensive meter such as a Sekonic L-308B is great - I have one of these and also a Sekonic L-358, which is just a little larger, more robust and has some additional functions which I never use. However, as another contributor has remarked, night shots are something else. The only real way to meter these accurately is with a spot meter - meter the highlights and give 2 stops more exposure. As the bright parts of night scenes can be small, the spot meter needs to be a "real" one (1°) like a Pentax, for example, and not a regular meter with a 5° attachment. As the level of lighting of buildings at night does not vary all that much, you could do worse than start with the exposure recommended above and bracket exposures slightly either way (cheaper than buying a meter if you would use this only for night shots). As regards Fred Parker, he has his admirers but I am not among them!

 

[IloveTLRs]

No one mentioned the Gossen Digisix? It can meter exposures up to 4 minutes.

 

[Vaughn]

How about forgetting the meter? Plenty of suggested times for night shots have been printed. A couple of test rolls and some note-taking, and you should be able to establish good exposure times/fstops for city scenes. A meter will not give you accurate times without the testing in any case -- reciprocity failure will come into play and over-ride whatever a meter might tell you. A meter reading of 6 minutes with Tri-X would have to be up to 1 hour long when reciprocity failure is taken into account (as per Michael Kenna).

Vaughn

For example, Michael Kenna recommends for T-Max 400 at f/5.6 (reciprocity failure factors included);
City skylines and scenes with direct street lighting -- 3 seconds
City with indirect indirect street lighting -- 20 seconds
City open spaces with distant lighting (parks, etc) -- 40 to 80 seconds

 

[Shiny]

I second the no meter approach, I don't use one at night. Just go out and shoot a roll - i normally find exposures from around 4 to 12 minutes at f8/f11 for night cityscapes, try a few times for the same scene.

This one was 10 mins at f8
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Jim