Vintage camera owners and manual shooters alike will love the look of these hotshoe-mounted meters, and they’re smart, too!
(Image credit: Capix/KEKS)
Maybe you’re using an old film camera that doesn’t have a working (or reliable) light meter, or maybe you’re into manual exposure control and want to step back from the nannying complexity of your camera’s built in exposure system. Either way, these two hotshoe-mounted light meters combine vintage style with some modern benefits. Some of the best film cameras don't even have light meters.
The point of external light meters is that they encourage you to think differently about exposure and how to measure it. They can tell you what the light levels are independently of the camera and you can choose how you interpret them and the exposure settings you choose on the camera. Check out our guide to the best handheld light meters to see what else is around.
Best of all, you can try these handheld meters out for yourself on the Capix stand at The Photography & Video Show this coming weekend.
KEKS KM02
(Image credit: Capix/KEKS)
This is the more advanced of these two new light meters. It has a metering cell at the front and an OLED exposure display at the back, with customisable options for shutter speed, lens aperture and ISO settings, together with the ability to shift exposure compensation from -3EV to +3EV. It’s powered by an internal battery offering 21 hours of continuous use, and you can create presets for up to three camera and lens combinations.
We don’t have any more detailed specifications at the moment, except that it offers continuous and single metering modes and a VEML7700 “high accuracy ambient light 16-bit digital resolution sensor”.
The continuous and single metering modes look interesting because you can take a fixed one-click exposure reading or move the camera around to see how the exposure changes with framing and pointing at different areas of the scene.
The KM02 does not make any electrical connections with the camera, so you should be able to attach it to pretty much any camera maker or model with a hotshoe – or on a coldshoe, for that matter. The KM02 is available now and costs $112 / £139 (about AU$269).
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KEKS KM-Q
(Image credit: Capix/KEKS)
The KEKS KM02 (above) is small, but the KM-Q is smaller still. In fact, it’s about the size of a sugar cube and no wider than the hotshoe mount it clips on to. We don’t know too much about this one, except that it, too, has the metering cell on the front and an OLED panel on the back.
The KEKS KM-Q is available now and costs $85 / £119 (about AU$230).
You will be able to check out both models at the Capix stand at The Photography & Video Show at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, UK, from March 16-19.
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Rod is an independent photography journalist and editor, and a long-standing Digital Camera World contributor, having previously worked as DCW's Group Reviews editor. Before that he has been technique editor on N-Photo, Head of Testing for the photography division and Camera Channel editor on TechRadar, as well as contributing to many other publications. He has been writing about photography technique, photo editing and digital cameras since they first appeared, and before that began his career writing about film photography. He has used and reviewed practically every interchangeable lens camera launched in the past 20 years, from entry-level DSLRs to medium format cameras, together with lenses, tripods, gimbals, light meters, camera bags and more. Rod has his own camera gear blog at fotovolo.com but also writes about photo-editing applications and techniques at lifeafterphotoshop.com
