One advantage of using a light meter on a video shoot is that you can measure the light close to the instrument instead of being stuck behind the camera. You can take a reading on the set, reach out and adjust a light, then take another reading. Much faster.

Also, one person can adjust the lights while someone else is moving the camera, or changing a lens.

I'm looking at the L-308DC DigiCineMate, which is designed for DSLR shooters.

Increasingly in a DSLR environment, you shd use a light meter cos you are shooting video with, well, a stills camera!

ENG cams tend to electronically correct many things, so a light meter is lost on them anyway.

It does actually. It's a bit of a discipline, but once you are used to using it, the light meter is invaluable. Being able to walk around set testing and tweaking lights without constantly checking the monitor and knowing exactly how it'll look as if you were looking at the monitor is priceless. The light meter is one of the best investments I've made in this industry next to my senior Magliner :)

@Vitaliy_Kiselev
Not as cheap as a light meter :)

Used to be you'd never trust a monitor for lighting at all because they were utter crap. They were just used for camera- composition/framing. Now, of course, monitors are great but if you want to pre-light, for example, you have to be able to measure how much light is here and there, etc. And on set as well when the camera guys are setting up their dolly move or whatever we're busy lighting…and not waiting to see what's on the monitor. And an incident reading is really what you need to good on…unless you've got a great DPs eye that just squints to see the contrast and modelling and hair light, etc… and then just uses the meter to get the F stop for camera. But still…we don't rely on a monitor for it

Other important thing to remember is that monitors are, essentially, computers.
And progress here will be fast. Various stuff now considered high end (like color waveforms, vectorscopes, etc) will be in cheapest stuff with time.

@davhar

Exactly.
If you are skilled with light meter, it works perfect.
It is very useful stuff.

I trust my lightmeter with film because I know in which zone I stand and how will the film react constantly. Video doesn't respond the same in every situation. Normaly i trust the camera's histogram way more than anything else there I see if I can over expose and then bring down in post.
I could use a lightmeter only after a lot of testing with one camera, if I change the camera then I could not trust it any more.

I had a lightmeter but never used it...
The histogram and highlight peaking is your friend !

• http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/889809-REG/Sekonic_L_478DR_Litemaster_Pro_Light.html
• http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/889811-REG/Sekonic_L_478D_Litemaster_Pro_Light.html

That looks very interesting considering what @shian says about exposing in zones. The software included determines the DR of your cam and safes it for later use so you can measure your scene and check if it is within that range. I like!

Yep!