---
title: A Possible Exposure Meter?
date: 2026-07-01
tags: [exposure, meter]
categories: []
author: Thom Hogan
image:
    src: "https://filmbodies.com/resources/images/bythom-ttartisan-lightmeter-6a450799b6578.png"
    alt: TTArtisan light meter
Status: published
---

A number of the really old Nikon film SLRs either have no working exposure meter, or have unreliable ones. So what do you do about that, just guess the exposure?

Outdoors in mid-day light, of course, you can use the Sunny 16 rule: 1/ISO at f/16. But the minute you're not in direct sunlight, you start having issues. My old *Nikon Field Guide* had a table and many added notes. Here's the table:

![bythom-exposure-table-6a4504afe3d03.png](https://filmbodies.com/resources/images/bythom-exposure-table-6a4504afe3d03.png)Of course, that's just for outdoors. I had additional tables for night exposures and other situations. The other problem is that all these categories were open to some interpretation, which meant that you needed to learn how to recognize what things like "heavy haze" actually looked like. 

Which lead most film users to handheld exposure meters, such as the old Sekonic (still available as the L398A), which can run from US$300 on upwards. Moreover, it's another device to juggle. 

These days, we have some less expensive alternatives that sit in the hot shoe of your camera, most notably the US$50 Reflx Lab and US$71 TTArtisan ones (TTArtisan one shown below).

![bythom-ttartisan-lightmeter-6a450799b6578.png](https://filmbodies.com/resources/images/bythom-ttartisan-lightmeter-6a450799b6578.png)This, of course, means that you have to transfer settings from the meter dials to the camera dials, but still is a fairly straightforward process. Another inexpensive widget that can serve the same purpose is Godox's new C100 "camera," which has a transparent window that shows exposure settings for where you point it.

![bythom-godox-c100-6a4508808d184.png](https://filmbodies.com/resources/images/bythom-godox-c100-6a4508808d184.png)If you're having exposure issues, let me know and I'll see if I can help you work through them. If enough people want them, I can publish the full set of *Nikon Field Guide* exposure tables in a Learn article on the site.