please recommend the best value in a light meter. i want to measure beam intensity and throw. not sure what meter will work best for this.
thanks
I believe the HS1011 was recommended some time ago. Don’t know if this is still true today.
https://www.fasttech.com/products/0/10003840/1274500-hs1010-illuminance-brightness-lux-meter-light
For many products that is an easy question but for luxmeters it is really tough:
*specs are usually vague
*there are no quality reviews to be found anywhere
*in light measuring, errors can be very high and are difficult to evaluate.
*Under 200 dollar there may not be a clear correlation between price and quality.
In short, every cheap luxmeter will do what you want if you are looking for ball-park figures, but if you want serious accuracy I can not give you a good advice.
I like my uni-t ut383. Take your results with a grain of salt and ideally check your measurements with some lights with known specs.
Or you can use your mobile phone. I have an android lux meter it is okay. These work as well as the phone sensors can pick up light. Plus calibration.
Hmm, phone ambient light sensors are among the worst for picking up correct lux values, but they can be useful if both:
1)they are calibrated against a known light source
2)and the colour temperature/CRI of the to be measured lightsource is not far from the calibration source.
If one of those will be left out, most phones are very very bad luxmeters.