The Reveni Labs hot shoe Light Meter is the smallest one we’ve found.  But adding ‘mini’ to the name was entirely my idea.  It was a Kickstarter that my husband joined a few months ago, and I have to say one that I’ve been most pleased with.

The Reveni Light Meter has an excellent downloadable .PDF manual that starts with the basics of metering and proceeds through to the specifics of this light meter’s operation.  Each orders includes a certificate as shown above.  I’ll spare you the full description, because the manual can be examined before you make a purchase.  A summary of the key feature are below:

The Reveni Light Meter has an excellent downloadable .PDF manual that starts with the basics of metering and proceeds through to the specifics of this light meter’s operation.  Each orders includes a certificate as shown above.  I’ll spare you the full description, because the manual can be examined before you make a purchase.  A summary of the key feature are below:

The Reveni Meter has an ambient reflective meter with a 45 degree cone sensor field.   It has a bright OLED display with simple menu and controls (shown below).  It has aperture or shutter speed priority settings.  Exposure compensation can be set in steps of 1/3 stops in a range of -2 to +2.

Example display of f/16 and an exposure of 4 seconds, representing measurement of the red background material.

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The Reveni uses a LR44 battery.  It weighs 9 grams including the battery.  The first battery is provided (at least for the Kickstarter version). The dimensions: 0.92 in (22.5 mm) x 0.86 in (21.8 mm) x 0.71 in (17.8 mm).  Now with the basics in hand, let’s get to the testing.

Light Meter Testing

To test the Reveni Meter I first compared it to my recently refurbished Minolta SRT-101, which included a light meter recalibration.  I mounted my f/1.7, 50 mm normal lens for the test.  I was exposing Kodak T-MAX 400 @ ISO 200 (E.I. 200).  Sometimes I held the f/-stop constant and changed the shutter speed and sometimes I held the shutter sped constant and changed the f/-stop.  In both cases my results were consistent.  The Minolta Meter was 1/2 to a full stop over exposed compared to the Reveni Meter results in medium to dimmer light.  The exposure difference could be as much as 2 f/-stops in bright light or with a lot of glare, as with the first example below. The Reveni doesn’t handle glare as well as the in-camera meter

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Both meters agree for the wide open landscapes……..as above.

I also happened to have my X-700 loaded with Ilford HP5 @ ISO 400 (E.I. 400) with a roll of film that I wanted to finish.  I had been using this camera to photograph my Birthday Bouquet.  So I snapped on the Reveni Meter and did a few comparison images.  Here is one example below.  The X-700 meter showed a full 2-stop difference.

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Final Thoughts

In general, I trust my 35 mm in-camera light meters, especially my refurbished SRT-101 and SRT-202, which were both re-calibrated.  And the in-camera meters seemed to handle bright light and glare better.  That said, I find no faults with the Reveni Meter and can think of two special cases where I will definitely use it.  I have two wonderful cameras that are fully manual with no light meters:  my Mamiya 1000s (645 format) and my FujiFilm GW690-III (6X9 mm format).  Usually I ‘guess-timate’ an exposure using the sunny-16 reference.  But, I’m not alway photographing in bright sunlight, and multiple bracketing exposures are not practical for the GW690-III which only has 8-shots per roll.  The Reveni Meter also offer a number of meter carrying options for cameras like the 1000s, that do not have a hot shoe.    So they have it all covered.  Be on the lookout for future works featuring these cameras and the Reveni Light Meter.

Technical Summary:

Speed: 1hr – 1/8000th sec in 1 stop increments

Aperture Range: F0.7 – f1024 in 1 stop increments

Film ISO Range: ISO 1 – ISO 12800, see “Setting Film ISO” for full list

Speed: 1hr – 1/8000th sec in 1 stop increments

Aperture Range: F0.7 – f1024 in 1 stop increments

Film ISO Range: ISO 1 – ISO 12800, see “Setting Film ISO” for full list

EV Shutter Range: EV 2 – EV 19.5 in 0.1EV increments (@ISO 100)

EV Shutter Range: EV 2 – EV 19.5 in 0.1EV increments (@ISO 100)

Note: Hamish Gill has published a detail and technically oriented review of the REVENI which can be found HERE. Turns out he;s friends withe developer and saw earlier models. Oh well, I had a;ready written this and decided to share it with my followers.