Want a Free Light Meter? Well Here it is!

By Mike Kennamer
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010

When I first saw this app I immediately discounted it as a gimmick. “That couldn’t possibly work,” I said. But I have been wrong before.

Then I tried it. What you get is a spot meter, which means that you get your reading by pointing your iPhone camera at the spot that you want to meter. The operation could not be any simpler. In this test I convinced my son, Cody, to be the model. I assured him that I just needed to meter his face to see if the meter is accurate. No photos were to be taken. (Okay, so I’ve been wrong before and I also sometimes lie.)

The reading on the Sekonic meter was 1/4 sec.

I asked Cody to sit next to the Christmas tree with one side of his face illuminated by the lights from the tree. Since the light was pretty low I set the ISO at 1600 and the aperture at f5.6. I wanted the meter to tell me what shutter speed to use. I first used the spot meter function on the Sekonic meter, which told me to shoot at ¼ second.

Then I tried the Pocket Light Meter by pointing the iPhone at the same location on Cody’s face. It too, suggested a shutter speed of ¼ second.

The Pocket Light Meter also showed 1/4 second.

While it has obvious limitations, I have found Pocket Light Meter to be amazingly worthwhile if you need to do a quick spot reading. While it is not likely to replace my $500 Sekonic L758DR, it does function as advertised and the price (FREE) is definitely right. While the fully-functional application is available for free, you can click on the information button and pay 99 cents to get rid of the ads or pony up $4.99 to “buy the developer a pint” of beer and get rid of the ads.

Please keep in mind that this was not an extensive test of the app. A real test would run the Pocket Light Meter through its paces in various lighting situations.  While that level of testing is beyond my pay grade, all that matters to me is that it works.

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Categories : iOS Apps, Mobile Devices and Apps, News and Reviews
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Comments

  11. It looks handy for manual cameras without built-in light meters, but any digital camera and SLRs made in the last 30 years already have reflective light meters. The real value of a handheld light meter is when using strobes, in which case you will need a incident light meter that will give readings for the strobes. I don’t think this app will do that.

  17. @TrevorCurrent i already have it…been testing it out just for fun and it’s pretty close!