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Light Meter Question


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I just purchased a new Sekonic L-858D it is a wonderful tool but I am wondering what I am losing if I exchange the item for a used meter without the cine function. I know I wont be able to use shutter angle or frame rate. Will a meter with out the Cine mode only be able to meter at 24fps? Im also curious how to check the calibration of a used meter. Thinking about the 608 potentially?

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I've never owned a meter with a cine function. Just a witness mark for 1/50 sec. All other calculations I just do in my head. Why make things complicated?

 

I do own an incident meter and a separate spot meter though. I like the calculator dial on the outside of the spot meter. It helps me visualize the readings on a scale.

Edited by Bruce Greene
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No meter assumes anything. On a Cine Meter you enter your frame rate and your shutter angle and it calculated the shutter speed given those variables for you. If you didn't have a cine meter you'd have to do the calculation yourself and then enter that as your shutter speed. If you changed your frame rate or your shutter angle you'd have to re-calculate your shutter speed on a non cine meter.

 

Personally, I have enough math to worry a bout that I wouldn't ever get a non-cine meter since it just makes it so much easier just to put in my FPS and shutter angle (which rarely changes). Aside, if you're doing high-speed work, you may need some pen and paper to work out a shutter speed and who has time for that?

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My Minolta meter has a cine function for a range of typical frame rates, but if your meter doesn't, then assuming that you are shooting at 24fps with a 180 degree shutter, your shutter speed would be 1/48 second. Every meter, cine or not, should have a setting for 1/50 second which is so close as makes no difference.

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My Minolta meter has a cine function for a range of typical frame rates, but if your meter doesn't, then assuming that you are shooting at 24fps with a 180 degree shutter, your shutter speed would be 1/48 second. Every meter, cine or not, should have a setting for 1/50 second which is so close as makes no difference.

I have an older Minolta meter without cine functions. It shows only 1/30, 1/60, 1/125 etc. There is nothing like 1/70...

 

With one exception: There is a special setting for 1/50 and it's not in the normal scale, but at the bottom of the longest exposures possible. I think this is so if it gets accidentally changed, it will change to to something like 50 minutes! And that will be so obvious, that one would not make a mistake :)

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Almost all digital meters have couple of frame rates included,
reachable either when entering CINE mode via custom settings or
as in most Sekonics, after reaching the end of shutter speeds
come the available FPS with 180 degree shutter in mind.

The usual suggestions for different shutter angle is to
compensate with offset of the ISO.


This screenshot of Sekonic's L-608© user manual explains this very clearly:

post-10922-0-80150500-1521400409_thumb.jpg


While the 608 and 608 Cine both measure also FC/LUX
the newer Sekonic models offer such measurements only in the Cine variants.

From what i see the difference between the 608 Cine and none Cine models is:
Analog scale in 1/3 stop (vs 1/2), more fps available, selecting shutter angle,
FC/LUX FL/cd/m^2 (vs FC/LUX).


Best.

 

PS: BTW, what's wrong with the Sekonic L-858D?

Edited by Igor Trajkovski
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