suggest a reliable hand-held meter that uses modern batteries.

Chan Tran said:

I actually think of accuracy in a different way. To me a meter is accurate if it conforms to its specification. As you know you own the KM flashmeter VI it's calibrated to a K14 and C330 for incident with the dome and C250 with the flat disc. The light level is defined as to how many lux or how many cd/m^2 for reflected. And the meter is accurate if it conform to that with a small tolerance.
With that said a meter can be accurate and accurately wrong if the user doesn't know how to interpret the readings.
By the way the way you describe some people make meter readings is almost the same way Ansel Adams described how Edward Weston did his meter reading... any way he got excellent result and so did Adams.

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Bill Burk said:

Here's the modification I did today to turn the TwinMate into a Zone System meter.

I put a screen protector over the front. Moved the calculator dial a stop at a time and marked the tip of the green arrow across the scale. Then I cut a sheet of brass into a comb to range from Zone II to Zone VIII. At left and right, there is barely room for 3 stops but marks for Zone II and VIII are necessary, so those two end marks are cut smaller. The VIII mark is "less accurately" cut than the rest - that's just a workmanship problem, not a design feature. I was very impatient, didn't wait for glue or paint to dry - so you can see it's rough. No Zone Roman numerals, you have to count them out.

I glued "on top" of the green pointer and with rough side up, so the modification won't interfere with the meter needle.

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