It never hurts to check your light reader reading against Sunny 16. I have a light meter that usually sends EV 14, EV15 or EV 16 on sunny days, but when it starts loosing the battery it starts reading EV 19 all the time. That is the only warning.
Should I buy a light meter for street?
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For street photography with a 135 camera, I'd just use a phone app. I have one I downloaded for free, and it's really accurate, so long as the lighting isn't too complex. Since you'll likely have your phone on you, that tends to make the most sense. My other recommendation would be a hotshoe mounted reflective meter. I have a very old Sekonic LC2 that I use for some of my older cameras. The selenium cell doesn't meter accurately anymore (it's usually a stop slow), and it's no good in low light. It is, however, more convenient than the cell phone because it's mounted directly to the camera, at the cost of accuracy. Though the accuracy doesn't bother me anymore because it's consistent in its inaccuracy, so I eventually learned it's quirks and how and when to compensate with it. I guess you could buy a newer, fancier model without the accuracy issues, but they all seem to be bigger and can get quite expensive.
If you were doing landscape photography, I might suggest a spot meter. If you were doing portrait photography, I might suggest an incident meter. But street photography doesn't usually give you a lot of time to set up and meter the light, nor does it encourage you to carry around a bunch of gear. So for that particular style, I would worry less about accuracy and more about speed and convenience.
If you were doing landscape photography, I might suggest a spot meter. If you were doing portrait photography, I might suggest an incident meter. But street photography doesn't usually give you a lot of time to set up and meter the light, nor does it encourage you to carry around a bunch of gear. So for that particular style, I would worry less about accuracy and more about speed and convenience.
Street photography is all about reacting rapidly to a composition happening right in front of you; you don't have time to pull out a meter.
If a meter is good for anything in street photography, it's for imprinting in your mind what a particular set of light conditions looks like for a given ASA. Once you have this "ocular mileage", you can increasingly do without it.
Sometimes I will take a digital camera with a Takumar or film-era K mount lens on it, set the ISO and shutter speed to match the films I use, walk around and say "f-stop so and so". Snap. Look at the back of the camera. This tells me whether I'm blown way out, terribly underexposed, or close enough that it will make no difference on film. That is how I train my eye to recognise the light and get close without a meter. Then when shooting film with that same lens, I can know how it will behave. If I had a solid week or so to do this, all day every day (a pipe-dream unfortunately at the moment), and reinforced it regularly, I would soon build up a body of experience that could free me from a meter under most circumstances.
The only time I use a meter for walk-around photography is (a) when I'm moving from sunlight to under shade or vice versa and I want a quick check of conditions, (b) when I'm taking a photo of an inanimate object with plenty of time to get set up and I want an exact reading, (c) when the sun comes out from very heavy cloud cover intermittently and conditions in the open shift drastically.
In my personal experience, the best older film camera for street is something like the Pentax ME - full-time aperture priority, set and forget f/8 or f/16 for zone focusing, hyperfocal distance and click, shot taken. Move on. (It also has 1/100 mechanical reversion at the flash sync setting, so if the batteries die you can do instant Sunny 16 with 100ASA film and one or two stop adjustments for 200 and 400.) But all that proves is that I don't shoot enough film or have enough opportunities to shoot street, because no doubt those intensely practised with completely manual film cameras have got their settings drill down to the point where even this is unnecessary.
If a meter is good for anything in street photography, it's for imprinting in your mind what a particular set of light conditions looks like for a given ASA. Once you have this "ocular mileage", you can increasingly do without it.
Sometimes I will take a digital camera with a Takumar or film-era K mount lens on it, set the ISO and shutter speed to match the films I use, walk around and say "f-stop so and so". Snap. Look at the back of the camera. This tells me whether I'm blown way out, terribly underexposed, or close enough that it will make no difference on film. That is how I train my eye to recognise the light and get close without a meter. Then when shooting film with that same lens, I can know how it will behave. If I had a solid week or so to do this, all day every day (a pipe-dream unfortunately at the moment), and reinforced it regularly, I would soon build up a body of experience that could free me from a meter under most circumstances.
The only time I use a meter for walk-around photography is (a) when I'm moving from sunlight to under shade or vice versa and I want a quick check of conditions, (b) when I'm taking a photo of an inanimate object with plenty of time to get set up and I want an exact reading, (c) when the sun comes out from very heavy cloud cover intermittently and conditions in the open shift drastically.
In my personal experience, the best older film camera for street is something like the Pentax ME - full-time aperture priority, set and forget f/8 or f/16 for zone focusing, hyperfocal distance and click, shot taken. Move on. (It also has 1/100 mechanical reversion at the flash sync setting, so if the batteries die you can do instant Sunny 16 with 100ASA film and one or two stop adjustments for 200 and 400.) But all that proves is that I don't shoot enough film or have enough opportunities to shoot street, because no doubt those intensely practised with completely manual film cameras have got their settings drill down to the point where even this is unnecessary.
VC is sexy and second version makes sense for quick metering.
This is how I use my mobile phone, simple lightmeter and S16.
I walk out on the street during the day and measure two places. Light and shadow. I keep on walking and adjusting exposure for light or shadow. If light stays the same, nothing to meter.
But most interesting light is then sun comes down and shadows are long. I have to check it more periodically, because sun goes down quick where I'm. I prefer same simple light meter for it and I prefer to measure incident light. I measure it with white sphere on. I'm getting good exposures in the shadows. VC measures reflected light, it might be the same and quicker. Once sun is down and I still want to take pictures I measure it with mobile phone. It works like spot meter. I select typical for particular location scene were light is typical for this location. And I point phone meter box to the light spot. I don't take pictures of the dark. I take pictures of light spots in the dark.
S16 works most of the times as well. Even with pushing. Years of taking pictures with same films, same light situations, I know something, you know.
This is how I use my mobile phone, simple lightmeter and S16.
I walk out on the street during the day and measure two places. Light and shadow. I keep on walking and adjusting exposure for light or shadow. If light stays the same, nothing to meter.
But most interesting light is then sun comes down and shadows are long. I have to check it more periodically, because sun goes down quick where I'm. I prefer same simple light meter for it and I prefer to measure incident light. I measure it with white sphere on. I'm getting good exposures in the shadows. VC measures reflected light, it might be the same and quicker. Once sun is down and I still want to take pictures I measure it with mobile phone. It works like spot meter. I select typical for particular location scene were light is typical for this location. And I point phone meter box to the light spot. I don't take pictures of the dark. I take pictures of light spots in the dark.
S16 works most of the times as well. Even with pushing. Years of taking pictures with same films, same light situations, I know something, you know.
Why not have it repaired?
Never really considered it as I already had the VC meter. I suspect the cost to repair the MR would be much more than it's worth...
I bought a Digisix when they first came out (80 bucks?) It's a great little meter. Doesn't have flash mode. look for a used one. Or spend 175 bucks for the latest version, I use incident for almost everything.
It is modern light meter powered by two most common, cheap batteries. Batteries and modern meter means - it could measure low light better.
Through high school I was using a light meter, by the end of high school I could guess the exposure without the meter by paying attention and being mindful of what I was doing.
Using seat of the pants estimates like Sunny-16 I could not have gotten to that point, so I consider some kind of objective measure like a light meter vital while learning and as a sanity check later.
Using seat of the pants estimates like Sunny-16 I could not have gotten to that point, so I consider some kind of objective measure like a light meter vital while learning and as a sanity check later.
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