The Exposure-Mat is a free printable "light meter"—it’s an expanded cheat sheet for the Sunny 16 rule, where you judge the light by eye/Use The Force. It only goes up to ISO 800, but once you’ve got the reading, you can easily compensate.
Learn more & download from expomat.tripod.com. Free for personal use.
Very simple and very cool. I think I might try to knock together something similar for my various pinhole cameras…
I just made four of these (2 fullsize and 2 mini), they’re that easy.
I thought as I was doing it what Matt Callow is thinking: it would be nice to have something like this for pinhole cameras. The various crib sheets on the web are all very well, but are not as elegant as this.
Nice.
I had a light meter when I was first taking pictures seriously, but I pretty much started leaving it behind immediately. I think it would be a great tool to have handy AFTER I become a master of the force, but I see so many students use it as a crutch I just don’t really worry about it yet.
So far the emperical method has worked well!