Sekonic L-308s opinions?

Paul in Arizona · Apr 29, 2015

Looking for another light meter. The current favorite idea is a Sekonic L-308s.
My requirements are small [shirtpocket] size; pretty basic incident/reflected readings with no frills. No spot; cine or any fanciness.

This meter has been around a long time and I'd like to hear from those of you who have had one for some time. Accurate? Reliable? Somewhere I read that they are fragile. Is that true?

Other meters I should consider? The 308's price point is fine.
I don't use any of the i-Toys so any suggestions of those apps are of no interest.

illumiquest · Apr 29, 2015

I'm still mourning the loss of my 308 and hoping to find another one used for a reasonable price. Great little meter, out of a bunch it's my favorite by a long shot. Accurate, tiny and i beat the hell out of mine and it never failed me.

TheFlyingCamera · Apr 29, 2015

No complaints about the 308 here. I had one for a long time before I upgraded to the 408.

M Carter · Apr 29, 2015

Owned two, one the first year it came out (308? 308B?) When it was stolen, I got a new one. Completely fabulous little thing, not a lot of bells and whistles - just does what it's supposed to do and does it well. Won't replace a spot meter if you're into ZS work, but very handy and accurate meter.

Oren Grad · Apr 29, 2015

A 308, purchased new back when that earlier version was current, has been my primary and favorite meter for years now. Hasn't ever missed a beat despite years of being stuffed into pockets and batted around.

There's no way for us to know whether anything has changed in the construction of the current model that might affect its reliability. But if I lost my 308, I'd buy a 308S right away to replace it.

Ko.Fe. · Apr 29, 2015

Paul in Arizona said:
...
My requirements are small [shirtpocket] size; pretty basic incident/reflected readings with no frills. No spot; cine or any fanciness.
...

I skipped 308 because it doesn't meet yours requirements and using TwinMate instead.

Trail Images · Apr 29, 2015

Paul, I see you're also multi-format user like me. With that said it was only about a week or so back I was reviewing the 308s and was planing to buy one and asked for guidance on the idea from others here at APUG. I got some really good feed back.

However, after further review I discovered it only worked at 60 second readouts and above. And after looking at other various meters I discovered a few more that fell into this same limitation along with only stopping down to f32. As I shoot a lot in low light and I have lenses that stop down to as far as f45 to f128 in some cases. It was right on the fringe of meeting my needs. If you have no issue with low light then I suspect the 308s is a really neat unit. I almost bought one.

Oren Grad · Apr 29, 2015

Trail Images said:
However, after further review I discovered it only worked at 60 second readouts and above. And after looking at other various meters I discovered a few more that fell into this same limitation along with only stopping down to f32. As I shoot a lot in low light and I have lenses that stop down to as far as f45 to f128 in some cases.

Just to be clear, the aperture readout of the L-308S goes to f/90 plus hash marks for up to nine 1/10-stop fractions.

I frequently use my L-308 for long exposures at small apertures with large format cameras. The aperture range imposes no limits for me. The 60-second shutter speed limitation doesn't bother me either; I don't mind doing any necessary extrapolations in my head. Once the exposures get beyond 1 second I have to correct for reciprocity failure, so the straight meter reading taken within that range will never be valid anyway. I've pretty much internalized the HP5 Plus reciprocity corrections and make any required adjustments on the fly. As always, YMMV.

Trail Images · Apr 29, 2015

Just to be clear, the aperture readout of the L-308S goes to f/90 plus hash marks for up to nine 1/10-stop fractions.

I frequently use my L-308 for long exposures at small apertures with large format cameras. The aperture range imposes no limits for me. The 60-second shutter speed limitation doesn't bother me either; I don't mind doing any necessary extrapolations in my head. Once the exposures get beyond 1 second I have to correct for reciprocity failure, so the straight meter reading taken within that range will never be valid anyway. I've pretty much internalized the HP5 Plus reciprocity corrections and make any required adjustments on the fly. As always, YMMV.

Thank you for this clarification, sounds like the 308s is back on my wish list.......

Sekonic L-308s opinions?

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