This is as true as saying politicians and lawyers are models of honesty and integrity.
Virtually all Selenium meters are dead
This is as true as saying politicians and lawyers are models of honesty and integrity.
I have looked at HUNDREDS of old Selenium meters over the last 30 years and exactly TWO of them were still accurate. One was a Sekonic L-398M, a meter that was still in production at the time (the current version is the L398A) so it really wasn't very old. The other is the Weston Master V that I bought at great expense from Ian Patridge, a British man who restores old Westons by putting new metering cells in them, a necessity because virtually all of them are dead now.
I have had numerous people show me old Selenium meters that they claimed worked and it took literally 30 seconds of testing to show that they were quite inaccurate, despite still giving 'readings.' Every. Single. Time.
I have looked at HUNDREDS of old Selenium meters over the last 30 years and exactly TWO of them were still accurate. One was a Sekonic L-398M
I have looked at HUNDREDS of old Selenium meters over the last 30 years and exactly TWO of them were still accurate. One was a Sekonic L-398M, a meter that was still in production at the time (the current version is the L398A) so it really wasn't very old. The other is the Weston Master V that I bought at great expense from Ian Patridge, a British man who restores old Westons by putting new metering cells in them, a necessity because virtually all of them are dead now.
I have had numerous people show me old Selenium meters that they claimed worked and it took literally 30 seconds of testing to show that they were quite inaccurate, despite still giving 'readings.' Every. Single. Time.
Any old light meter that is over a decade old will most likely need to be adjusted for back into calibration regardless of the type of meter. To calibrate a light meter to a standard source includes more that just the reading accuracy, there drift adjust measurements that need to be returned as will as other controls. Just recalibrating a meter to a standard source will improve its performance.
The L-398 is the successor to my preferred meter, the L-28C. I am not in the habit of sweeping statements, but the Sekonics I have used from the 1960s and 1970s have all been perfectly serviceable.
When you say the “hundreds” of meters you tested were all “wildly inaccurate,” what exactly did your tests show? Were they consistently off by a stop? Or were they high for some readings, low for others? The first is no big deal, the second is a deal-breaker.
In the end, all a meter does is give a yardstick. The process of metering light for a photograph is inherently full of variables (angle of light, cloud cover, incident or reflective metering, use of a gray card, dynamic range of light and shadow in the frame, shadow content, etc) that renders absolute meter accuracy a pointless exercise for most. Some don’t even bother with a meter — they rely on their eyes to read a scene. The important thing is repeatability. Fetishizing absolute meter accuracy is a distraction for most people trying to make a photograph on film.
If the fetishists succeed in driving people away from old meters, that’s fine by me. I won’t have to pay stupid high prices for my Sekonics in the future.
I have looked at HUNDREDS of old Selenium meters over the last 30 years and exactly TWO of them were still accurate. One was a Sekonic L-398M, a meter that was still in production at the time (the current version is the L398A) so it really wasn't very old. The other is the Weston Master V that I bought at great expense from Ian Patridge, a British man who restores old Westons by putting new metering cells in them, a necessity because virtually all of them are dead now.
I have had numerous people show me old Selenium meters that they claimed worked and it took literally 30 seconds of testing to show that they were quite inaccurate, despite still giving 'readings.' Every. Single. Time.
Sekonic makes a small analog meter called the Twinnmate L-208 that might work for you. It uses a silicon cell and has an analog dial.
However, I did not like my L-208. It was OK for taking readings (both reflected and incident), but the dial seemed rather loose. Not as solid as I would have liked.
It sucks that we can’t have mercury batteries (even if we promise to be environmentally responsible with them) because they are a reference source of accuracy
The dial IS loose and it cannot be fixed. I have dumped mine.
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