I’ve been thinking about getting a spotmeter for a few years now. Mainly for my large format work, and when I shoot slide film. Light metering is a whole science, and you can find courses on different ways to meter. I’m not too fuzzy about it really, for example I enjoy the light meter in my Lomo LC-A just because it is so bad. But you can get really unexpected end results when you expose for the highlights/bright sun or get an unexpectedly long shutter speed.
When the Reveni Labs Spot Meter kickstarter showed up, about a year ago now, I jumped on the chance to get a brand new spot meter for a decent price. It arrived during last autumn, so I had to wait about 6 months for it to arrive, just slightly delayed. The kickstarter process itself was fine, regular updates, clear information about why delays happened and how they would impact final product shipping.
My first impressions of getting the meter was pretty weak. The casing feels very 3d printed, and fragile. It feels like it might crack pretty easily if I drop it. It is also very light, which make it feel very “hobbyist” even though nobody wants to carry unnecessary weight.
I’ve now been using it for a few months and here’s what I think now - I’m still not impressed. My main issue with it is that it takes a while to turn on. I mean, it’s a small computer that boots up every time you turn it on and it takes a few seconds. While you wait, those few seconds feel REALLY long. The small computer drains the 2xLR44 batteries so quickly so the meter shuts itself off after a quite short while to save batteries, and then you have to boot it up again. If I’m walking around taking shots with anything except the large format camera, this constant turning on the meter became extremely annoying. There are settings that you can adjust for it to stay on longer, but this drains batteries very quickly.
During these months it also had a bug in the firmware where it would take EXTRA long time if the meter was turned on in a bright environment. And sunny days in show is very bright indeed. This has now been fixed, but still.
The metering reticle is supposed to be 1.5 degrees, which is quite narrow indeed. However this feels like it’s only possible in optimal conditions. There isn’t a hard cutoff outside those 1.5 degrees, and when metering in snow it seems like you have to be extremely careful to not have any snow within the outer reticle or the metering will be off. So it is not a very reliable meter up here in the north during spring.
The method of using both eyes and letting our brains mix the two images together worked pretty well I think, but as someone who wears glasses it was sometimes difficult to see the meter when outside in the sun. I had to kind of cover the sides with my hand while I held it. Not a huge issue, but stil.
There are a bunch of different metering modes, but I’m not a metering expert and just taking one meter reading works well for me, if I can trust that the reading is an accurate one,.
All in all, the cost now at €165/$180 is quite high. Import taxes and shipping bumped that up to over €200 for me personally, and I feel let down. If it was easy to return it, I would. But Reveni Labs are located in Canada and it would be too much of a hassle.
Going forward, I wish the firmware gets an overhaul and the low-power states that are possible on the CPU are examined more in detail to find a balance where maybe it doesn’t have to boot up from scratch every minute. Some sort of hibernation state for some 15 minutes maybe would be a good compromise between battery life and usability. There is a battery pack that could be bought as an addon now, so you can use AA batteries instead of these button cell ones, but that feels like an afterthought for less than ideal design/testing work. But it’s somewhat of a one-man show over there in Canada so it’s impressive that these meters have gotten this far.
Anyway, there are not a lot of NEW spot meters out there to buy. The Sekonic ones are $600+. Gossen has one that is like $2500+. So all things considered, if you need a spot meter and it doesn’t have to be perfect, or you are not a professional in need of pro-equipment, this is a fine choice.
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