I have a Sekonic L-358 that my dad passed down to me and i'm not to sure of how to use it. From what i know my camera has a light meter built into it. Could someone help me out, just a brief summary of its use. I just want to know if i need it or not.
It's a pretty straightforward thing as long as you know how to mess with your aperature / iso / shutter settings in full manual. Just point the bulb of the meter as close to the object you're shooting as possible with the it pointed towards your camera and meter the light, then you can change the settings around on the meter to your liking and it will show you more acuarately than your camera where everything needs to be....
That was confusing so for example, you KNOW you need to shoot at an aperature of 5.6 with an ISO of 200, you put those settings in, meter the light, and it will tell you what your shutter speed needs to be. Its much more acurate than your camera and very usefull on snow or in very light pollouted situations where its hard to meter one object with your cameras spot meter. Orrr for flashes obviously, but I don't think you're there yet.
the older film cameras did not have light meters built in so this was their use. you point the light recieving end at the camera to read the amount of light coming onto the subject and adjust your camera according to that.
--a good amount of old school large format (8x10) cameras dont have meters built in.
the only other use i know for them is 16 and 8 mm movie cameras that dont have them built in.