What do you need one for?
You may be able to pick up a Sekonic L308s on fleebay for £60 ish, or there's a very good iPhone app for a few bucks
metering light when trying to shoot indoors around dusk because i am trying to get that studio finish look and my shot seem to becoming out just ever so slightly dark or light if i use flash two much now i have tried to slow flash down and make it less intense using exposure compensation and flash compensation but then it still isnt right
now what i dont want to do is use a post editing software due to i feel that photography is all about trying to do it all on the camera and yes i appreciate that its not always possible.
Good luck with that...
Photography is all about getting the picture and how you do that is up to you.
If you are serious about photography and you want real control over your pictures then you need to control the output as well.
A digital camera will process your pictures according to a set of criteria set down for the "average user" by a programmer in a back room of a Japanese corporation.
That programmer knows that the "average user" only takes snapshots of family and friends so that is what your camera is programmed to make your pictures look like.
It's like having a top of the range professional film camera and then sending your film to Bonusprint to see the results...
First of all, your camera contains all the metering equipment you need to do the job. The histogram mode is one of the most important function of your camera and if you have not yet learned to use that then a light meter will be a complete waste of money.
Next, you need to start shooting raw rather than letting your camera make all the decisions for you. That means you will have to use some form of image processing software.
Finally, if you want to get a "studio finish look" you will need to use off camera flash and learn about lighting. A flash on your camera is completely unsuited to that sort of effect.
The other alternative is to shoot outside, 9 times out of 10, studio lighting is designed to simulate outdoor light so the easy thing to do is go outside.
( I still own two top notch light meters that have not seen use in years. I keep them because if I ever use my film cameras again I will need them but for digital use they are effectively redundant.)
A tutorial on histogram use?
In the old days of film, a skilled printer could bring out loads of extra detail from a neg, be it b&w or colour. But in this digital age, if you have not been very precise with your exposure you can be missing detail the camera never actually records. No photoshop in the world will be able to rectify that.
I always try to make my shots as good as possible in camera. I find you need to be as critical as with tranny film stock to get the best results. As I said, reflectors, bounce flash, fill flash, neutral density grad filters, polarizers are all tools to help you do this. Photoshop can help you tweak looks and colours, but it can'd add lacking detail.
The old maxim, rubbish in, rubbish out is even more true on digital.
cheers
Gareth
Very true, no amount of jiggery pokery in the computer can turn a bad picture into a good one.
Two things that irritate me when people see a decent shot are when they turn around and say either, "You must have a good camera", as if somehow the camera is responsible for composing a shot or waiting hours for the light to be right, or, "You can make anything look good in Photoshop"...
You still have to be there to get the shot and not be a total Muppet to record the image properly.