The Reveni Labs Light Meter launched on Kickstarter on Saturday evening, and within the day beat its ~£9.5k goal! As you can see above, the light meter itself is designed to be absolutely tiny, and slot into the hot/cold shoe of your camera.
Despite its tiny size – at 22.5 x 21.8 x 17.8 mm, and weighing 8g – it has a bright OLED screen, a simple control and menu system, aperture or shutter priority modes, an ISO range from 1 – 12800, an aperture range from f0.7 – f128 and a shutter speed range from 8min to 1/8000s, and is all powered off a single LR44 battery.
Matt Bechberger the founder of burgeoning company Reveni Labs says in the Kickstarter
“The light meter I created uses modern technology to add metering onto any camera. the housing is made from a high quality 3D printed nylon using Multi Jet Fusion technology
“Readings are shown on a bright and crisp OLED display. At less than an inch in all dimensions and weighing only 8 grams, it makes the perfect companion to any camera kit. The bottom of the meter features a flash shoe mount, making it easy to mount on hundreds of cameras.”
Despite already owning a Voigtlander VCII meter, I backed this project within the first couple of hours of it launching – I love seeing this sort of innovation in our industry, and am always happy to support it.
If you want to back it too, you can do so on Kickstarter here.
Not sure on which basis such meter should be considered as an innovation. Please check L-101 or V-201X meter on eBay.
So far I see no one online able to properly compare such meters with a Digisix or VCII but still “influencers” recommend it…
It’s smaller has a wider range than those meters and looks to be readable in the dark. And it’s cheaper. How isn’t it an innovation?
Just because something similar exists doesn’t mean something similar with a different set of advantage shouldn’t.
Also L-101 and V-201X bring me nothing of relevance on eBay…?
Here you go for the ebay links:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/L-101-light-meter-photography-set-top-reflection-metering-hot-shoe-nylon-case/133295781620?hash=item1f090c36f4:g:Z-oAAOSwh4BeE0O2
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Metal-V-201X-photography-set-top-reflection-light-meter-hot-and-cold-shoe-fix/133344262149?hash=item1f0beff805:m:mHT-DrlX5e4_cwstrgX3DSQ
Interesting. But bigger and the shutter and aperture ranges are smaller
I don’t know whether this is innovative or not, but the L-101 or V-201X are cheaper. I’m torn between buying the L-101 or V-201X now or waiting for the Kickstarter to end (I missed it).
I wonder if it supports non-standard shutter speeds, as often seen on cameras without light meters (eg, 1/50th)? That might be interesting…
Oh, that’s like a camera equivalent of the little guitar tuners!
Thanks for this link Hamish – very interesting & useful.
As someone who – apologies – mostly shoots Leica rangefinders (a ii, a iiig and an M2), a smaller, more convenient meter would be a bonus, particularly for the Leica ii, which – inspired by Hamish’s post on his Leica Standard – is permanently in my trouser pocket.
However, I frequently use a viewfinder in the cold shoe – 35mm, 50mm (because of the squinty-ness) & 135mm for the screw-mounts, a 24mm for an m-mount adapted Canon wide-angle, and the rare-ish, expensive and wonderful AUFSU waist-level finder on whichever body has a 50mm mounted.
However, I couldn’t use the accessory-shoe lightmeter at the same time as an external viewfinder, which would make it less attractive to me – unless I had a double accessory shoe adapter gizmo, like the difficult to find and ludicrously priced – even for a Leica user – Voigtlander one. Suspecting that I might not be the only one, I contacted Matt at Reveni Labs with these thoughts, and he kindly responded almost instantly to tell me that he’d already had the same idea, and was working on 3D printed prototypes!
Consequently – assuming that I’m not wierdly unique – there’s potentially even better news that will make this new product more useful – and more desirable – to a larger group of shooters than the meter alone: hope this helps!
Looks fab eh. Added bonus – a meter I can read without glasses! I guess you’ve reached out for a quick pre-production review Hamish? I’d like mine in milled aluminium (OK- 3D printed titanium) if you’re chatting to Matt. Oh – and see if he’ll develop a water-resistant one at some stage for my Nikonos please.
Well, I couldn’t resist pledging. But now I’m kicking myself for getting rid of my Leica M4-P a couple of years ago. Now I’ll have to get another M4 or something similar.
The kickstarter campaign has already reached its goal with 28 days left.
$50,270 pledged of $11,995 goal
Fabrication is scheduled for September