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The cheapest lightmeter ever


@bumac

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The cheapest lightmeter ever made is a mirror about 4" wide, 2" tall. The bottom half is a print of several humans eyes at various pupil dialations, with an Ev value below each eye. You put yourself in the position of the subject (incident concept), look into the mirror and match your iris with one printed below. Voila! Exposure reading!

 

A chart on the backside has the elementary speed/iso conversions.

 

I kid you not - there actually was such a gizmo sold at one time.

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Cool, though there is something ironic about measuring light for photography using a 5megapix camera. ;-)

 

Pico, too cool, never seen one of those, but if the average human have the same iso, then it seems fairly reasonable to try to reference the build in cameras f.stop. though I suspect there is some fairly large room for error here. maybe as a iphone app, use the chat camera to capture a closeup of the eye, then compare to images on the iphone. :D No really, just kidding, but would be interesting to know how accurate the f.stop in the eye actually is. (do we have auto-iso.?)

 

.

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Cool, though there is something ironic about measuring light for photography using a 5megapix camera. ;-)

 

Pico, too cool, never seen one of those, but if the average human have the same iso, then it seems fairly reasonable to try to reference the build in cameras f.stop. though I suspect there is some fairly large room for error here. maybe as a iphone app, use the chat camera to capture a closeup of the eye, then compare to images on the iphone. :D No really, just kidding, but would be interesting to know how accurate the f.stop in the eye actually is. (do we have auto-iso.?)

 

.

 

I don't know if it would be accurate. I believe it would not work for me this Saturday morning. :)

 

There was another meter commonly used called an Extinction device. It was a viewer with several filters of graduated neutral density. One would view the subject through it, then dial in heavier ND filtration until the highlights just disappeared (extinction), then check a chart of the plate type against the ND filter to read off the exposure. Yes, this type read from highlights. Shadows went away quickly. I have a couple, but the filters clouded up long ago.

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My father had one about the size of a matchbox. You looked through it and read a number from a scale behind a wedge of mica. The more light, the higher the number could be seen through the thicker part of the wedge. On the outside was a tiny sliding scale to match the number against a DIN value, and a shutter speed. I can't recall the make, but was probably German (DIN, not ASA, and bought to go with his Exakta SLR).

 

Chris

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Wrong shape, but the same principle. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

BTW, if I installed the app above in my first gen iPod Touch (no camera) I guess it would give me the correct exposures for those times when I forget to remove the lens cap!

 

Chris

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  • 3 weeks later...
Even cheaper, just use the Sunny 16 rule. :D (Or if you are as old as me, remember the instructions from the sheet of paper that used to be included with every roll of film.)

 

Nicole

 

I can remember 'Sunny 16' but none of the film instruction sheets I've ever read.

At my age I have a hard time even remembering this morning's newspaper headline.

If I were to go to the basement freezer for a box of film and it's instructions,

I'd likely have forgotten my mission upon reaching the bottom of the stairs.

I love my Sekonic... when I remember to take it with me.

 

What's an iPhone???

 

Best regards

 

Sam

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Guest malland

I tried the iPhone app against the Gossen Digisix and find that it generally gave me the same exposure, but the funny thing while the aperture/shutter speed combination (say, f5.6–1/125sec) was the same for various ISOs the EV shown was not the same. I assume the iPhone app is not showing the correct EV, which is a problem for me because I would like to try it with a Hasselblad 903-SWC, on which you can set the EV directly.

 

—Mitch/Bangkok

Paris au rythme de Basquiat (WIP)

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