Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I'll be investing in several AB monolites and fully expect to have to aquire a decent flash meter. Is there a reasonable entry level unit that will cover most of the bases.

I have been reading about the Gossen Digipro F, Digiflash, the Sekonic L - 358 and the L-308S. Now that i'm retired even $100 spent un necessarily makes a difference. I used to blindly buy the best and wound up not using most of what i had (function wise)

thanks

bryan

If you are looking ato purchasing our lights, take a look at the CyberCommander, which will have an accurate lightmeter integrated. This will allow you to meter your lights wirelessly, you can trigger individual or groups of lights. The Commander is $179, less than even the least expensive meters.

TS

Cyber Commander's meter tracks Sekonic within 1/10f from the f1 to f45 in our tests. About 3/10 error at f64 (ISO100)

Which of the light meters mentioned would be best for the job and which model. I'm assuming you like the sekonic by your answer.

I agree the Cyber Comander is worth a look and i'd like to compare it. I've found some more posts of interest here and will devour them shortly. I did run several searches and didn't find anything but a short look around netted a fair chunk of reading.

The CC would require one slave for each light???? The AB's are analog so how could there be any interactivety?

i'll dig and see what reading i can find on your unit.

One plus may be the service. I belive you have a canadian service depot in place.

I personally use a Sekonic L-358, but mainly because I shoot in complex lighting most of the time since the majority of my work is done on location. However, if you are shooting digitally, a light meter isn't completely necessary if you can accurately read the histogram. I shot for a few months without a meter simply by looking at my preview in camera, tweaking until the histogram looked "right" to me. After a little experimentation, you will eventually learn what works for you until you've researched the meter you feel most comfortable with. If this is just a fun hobby for you, the meter might not be necessary until you want to get a little more creative.

I have a question about the Cyber Commander as a flash meter.
Is it designed to be used on camera as a reflected light meter or
can it be used at the subject in an incident meter mode?

The CyberCommander's job as a meter is that of an incident meter, meaning from the subject's position. It never acts as a reflected meter. Sitting in the hotshoe, it does not sense light and adjust based on what it sees. Manual input is still needed prior to the exposure, based on the incident readings. The Commander allows the manual input to be adjusted without going to each light.

TS

The Sekonic 358 is your best bet but the 308 will work as well. I have the 358 and the CC and I don't find the increments with the CC to be enough for my needs. I have not used the CC much due to firmware issues (waiting on the fix) so I might not understand how to get the CC to show the same scale as the Sekonic.

Best of luck to you. You will love the PCB lights.

-Darrin

The CC reads in 1/10 stop incriments, just like the 358, and are displayed the same (at least the same as the default in the Sekonic). Also, our Gossen displays virtually the same

example: f/5.6 and a half is displayed as

"5.6' 5"

TS

I'll have to do some more tests. When I increased my light just a bit, my sekonic 358 would pick this up and display the minute increment while the CC would jump 2/3 or 1 full stop (if at all).