Monthly Archives: May 2011

Sekonic L-758D Light Meter – first impression

I finally decided to get a new light meter. After nearly ten years with a Gossen Digisix the time had come to step up to a meter that would also do flash. This will only be the first impressions I gathered so far. I actually ordered a L-758DR but the shop managed to deliver only the L-758D and will now send me the optional RT module. I can live with that as it saves me from returning the meter in exchange for the DR version.

Sekonic L-758D

As expected it came nicely packaged with a pouch, a battery, manuals, the software and a strap. Compared to the little Gossen “egg” it is quite a big piece of gear. But it’s light-weight and feels nicely in the hand. All possible modes, settings and functions may seems quite overwhelming at first glance but the manual is well written and the meter is easy to use. The basic metering is easily possible without reading the manual… Continue reading

Flash, night shots and HDR

It’s been a while since the last post, so this one going to be a bit of more than one topic. Mainly to document for myself before I forget everything 😉

Little hijacker

First “job” was shooting one of the missus’ DIY projects. Simple set-up with two strobes – nothing exciting. Nice practise for the metering skills though. While shooting the scene got hi-jacked by our son. Who wouldn’t snap the shutter when that smile jumps into the frame. For a real portrait session I should add another strobe to properly light the background. I had another hijacker jumping the frame who didn’t want to end up on the blog. Well practise nonetheless.

With that task completed I wanted to explore how dark it can be to get a reading with the L-758D. It does do quite ok in limited light. So blue hour is mostly fine. But it gets to the limits shortly after that. So it’s quite amazing to see how much the human eye can actually do. It did however a pretty good job telling me the dynamic range I had before me. That reduced the number of shots I would have taken by just guessing. Unfortunately I found another limitation. The camera I had on me (the good ol’ Fuji S7000) produces mostly noise in the ‘shadows’ when I exposed for the highlights. I had to ditch a number of shots because they simply ruined the HDR images by adding too much noise. Continue reading