Rant: That time a 60 year old Minolta light meter beat my brand new Sekonic

I was at a camera swap in Portland last month and tested a beat-up Minolta Auto Meter III from 1985 against my Sekonic L-858 I paid $400 for. To my surprise, the old Minolta was within 0.1 stops across every lighting condition I threw at them - fluorescent, tungsten, even mixed. Makes me wonder if all this digital wizardry is actually overkill for the stuff most of us shoot. Has anyone else tested vintage gear against modern stuff and found the old tech holds up better than expected?

3 comments

3 Comments

ruby6599d ago

Yeah but @ericcraig, does that old Minolta handle tricky mixed lighting as fast as the Sekonic, or does it make you wait for a reading? I'm wondering if the real difference shows up in speed, not just accuracy.

ericcraig9d ago

Buy the old Minolta on eBay for fifty bucks and pocket the change. A light meter that reads within a third of a stop is all you'll ever need for portraits or landscapes.

fiona_kim975d ago

Really lean into what @ericcraig said about that 0.3 stop threshold. I've done the same test with a beat-up Gossen Luna Pro from the 70s against a modern Gossen Digisix, and honestly, the old one matched it shot for shot in open shade and even in that tricky window light where things get green and blue mixed together. The only place I saw a real difference was in super fast action strobe situations where the digital meter locked in half a second faster. But for 95% of what I shoot - portraits, landscapes, even some street stuff with flash - that old Minolta is just as good, and I bet the battery lasts way longer, too. The Sekonic is a beast, but you're paying for speed and features most of us never use.