Does anyone hear use a light meter? I need to learn how to do the math when it comes to lens speed, iso, aperture etc... but everything I see says you need either an in camera light meter or a stand alone. My D50 and D80 don't have them built in. What do you guys do?

 

Your cameras do have a reflective light meter, it's visible in the viewfinder and on the LCD. The advantage of a separate hand-held meter is they typically have reflective and incident light metering. Some of the fancier ones will let you balance between flash and ambient light.

You should probably just work with what you have for now before buying something else.

 

Damn thanks for letting me know I was reading an article that says there isn't one...stupid interweb!

 

It's the set of green bars at the bottom of the viewfinder. If you shoot in manual mode, you'll see the meter move around depending on how bright the scene is and what settings you have chosen. If you're underexposed, the marker will be on the left, if you're over exposed it will be on the right.

If you use the aperture priority or shutter priority modes, the metering is automatic and this indicator is used for exposure compensation instead. You can still move it to the under exposure or over exposure sides by dialing in exposure compensation.