As much as I love my Leica M2, I do miss a built in light meter. I’d been using my phone and an app but it’s a bit of a hassle to bring it out and meter. My ability of sunny 16 is mostly limited to it’s sunny so it’s 16. Although I find myself doubting it…”is it really f/11? Seems too big” etc.

So my options were (a) buy a handheld meter (b) buy a shoe mount meter or (c) buy a new camera. As much as I’d love to get a M6 or MP, spending £1-2k on top of the M2 seemed a little…excessive. Whilst a handheld meter would be a nice to have accessory useful for lots of situations, I didn’t want another thing to carry, and so I settled on the shoe mount. 35mmc have a great comparison article looking at several ones and based upon that and availability and being local to Europe I chose the Hedeco Lime One.

‘Nice

I was randomly lucky in that it was just about to ship when I ordered and so hardly had to wait. I choose silver to match the M2 and waited for it to arrive. After a week of nothing, no tracking updates, I was beginning to worry. So I emailed Johannes, and he offered his apologies that it hadn’t arrived but should hopefully do so soon. After emailing him, as like all support calls, the tracking updated a few hours later and it turned out mine had gone for a little trip to Northern Ireland! Kindly Royal Mail put it on Special delivery for the next day, so I eventually got it and had time to open it up and have a look.

WOW! This thing is tiny!

It’s very easy to use - the quick start guide is very helpful to get going and it has a nice manual too. You can choose modes and then the wheel and wheel + button allows you to adjust two parameters very quickly. It continually meters and you can press the button to hold the reading. Or you can swap it around so it only meters when you press the button and retains that info.

I’ve got it mounted, and whilst it’s obviously an accessory, I think it fits well enough with the camera. Plus it adds a great deal of functionality for me. The real test will be in using it. So I’ll be back with my impressions of it in use after shooting a few rolls with it.