The Light Meter App

One of the first cameras I ever used was a Voightländer Perkeo II, a smallish folding camera that used 120 film in the 6×6 format. The camera was made in the early 1950s, before I was born. I had to carry a separate Vivitar light meter that was about the size of a roll of 35mm film. Once, around the age of 15, on a family vacation out west, I accidentally dropped the light meter in a lazy river in Grand Teton National Park. We found it floating a hundred yards or so downstream.

I still have the light meter (and the old camera). I don’t use it, though. My modern camera has all that light-metering functionality built into it. And I downloaded a light meter app for my iPhone from the app store. I like the new technology better – but the old stuff worked pretty well, too.