Gossen Ultra-Pro

A fine light meter. Very exact and reliable. Very advanced and yet easy to use. A lot of photometric features. Has a lot of attachments which makes this into the base of a modular system (for spot, darkroom, color measurements, densitometry...)

The reason I like it so much is that I can use it as a simple incident or broad angle reflected meter OR do a lot of repated mesurements and contrast evualuation and mixed flash and ambient readings, and it does both things as easy. It is very exact and reliable, and is extremely easy to use. You cannot do spot measurements unless you buy the appropriate attachment, but apart from that I thing you can do everything with this meter. I use this meter with my Leica M4-P camera and the meter is really to big to drag along a small camera like that, but it''s so good that I can''t seem to part with it. I''m giving it a 5 as value rating even though it''s very expensive, since I believ it will last forever.

Objectively no weaknesses, although it sometimes feels to big for my kind of photography (Leica M and documentary).

The only contact I have had with Gossen is that I asked if I could by an instruction manual for the meter (very long), and they replied by sending me a copy of one.

Very versatile and accurate meter. Only handheld I use now. A bit expensive new. I've had mine over ten trouble free years. Low light reading differed from my Calculite but the photos are right on (after compensating for reciprocity of course). Haven't used the Calculite in years.

Accuracy. If its light, it can measure it in any unit you want. Ambient/Flash/Mixed. EV range readout. Multi reading averaging. Fairly compact. On/off lock. Uses 9v battery. Wealth of features. Long exposure count is handy. Wide variety of accessories. I use the studio dome quite a bit.

Not weather proofed like some of the recent Sekonic meters. Accessories held on by two long pins which insert into two small holes on the end of the meter. This is a little flimsy and can break if not careful when removing an accessory, as happened to me.

Sekonic, Calcu-lite.

Broken pins on studio dome promptly repaired under warranty. No problems since.