In January Matt Bechberger of Reveni Labs introduced a new meter design. It was to be a full feature meter with incident and reflective metering plus flash and color temperature. In a departure from the 3D printed nylon he had been using, it was to be housed in a machined aluminum housing, metal buttons and a full color screen. I backed the Kickstarter, the meter arrived today. It is exceedingly well made, offers a ton of features, has a bright, easy to read full color screen and fits in a pocket. The incident dome is fixed with the reflective sensor at the top of the meter. It's powered by a NiMH battery and USB-C charging.
Initial test shows it closely matches the readings from my Sekonic 308X but is only about a third it's size.
I have a feeling this will be my go to meter. Matt has learned a lot since the original cube and every meter since has shown improvement. This one is a home run.
Sorry for the lousy phone pictures but wanted some for the post.
I don't find this intuitive but I'm sure somebody else would. It'd be nice to just display total exposure, ambient, and then flash. The Sekonic does this but with little markings on a horizontal scale.
No flat. Just the 3D dome on the front of the meter. The reflective sensor is on the top. The menu has incident, reflective, flash, cine incident and cine reflective. It also reads color temperature either in lux or foot candles.
That’s a miss IMO. Doing lighting ratios without a flat diffuser allows for errors in readings from other sources. There is a reason serious light meters have a flat diffuser.
madNbad wrote:
No flat. Just the 3D dome on the front of the meter. The reflective sensor is on the top. The menu has incident, reflective, flash, cine incident and cine reflective. It also reads color temperature either in lux or foot candles.
JBPhotog wrote:
That’s a miss IMO. Doing lighting ratios without a flat diffuser allows for errors in readings from other sources. There is a reason serious light meters have a flat diffuser.
It's more in keeping with the sturdy design. Fewer moving parts, fewer things to break or get lost. I have a flat diffuser for my 308 and used it once in helping light some art work. It does a lot for a meter that's the size of my thumb but it has limits. Also, Reveni is a very small operation. There isn't a team of designers and engineers or a company like Sekonic that can offer a wide variety of meters. The first product, the shoe mount meter was brought to the market in 2019. Six years later, the Lumo is introduced. That's a lot of innovation in a very short time.
I'd want to know about the battery replacement and meter calibration. NiMH charged by USB is uncommon nowadays. The old meters had standard batteries so useful life is decades with calibration.
EB-1 wrote:
I'd want to know about the battery replacement and meter calibration. NiMH charged by USB is uncommon nowadays. The old meters had standard batteries so useful life is decades with calibration.
EBH
I've had the meter for almost a week. Topped off the charge when it arrive and between using it, learning what it can do plus demonstrating it for others, it shows I have used about a quarter of the battery life.
I had a firmware glitch that caused the meter to shut down. I contacted Matt and he instructed me how to unplug the battery to reset the meter. The pair of MiMH cells are held in place with a pliable adhesive and attached to the board with a two pin connector. There could be a user replaceable battery in the future. It would be nice if he would offer a AAA replacement back as an optional accessory. Maybe I'll ask him.
The meter offers a customizable setting feature for incident and reflective readings, color tempature and flash.
So long as it's easy to replace with standard cells that should be fine.
I'm so sick of perfectly good products with oddball LiPo batteries that are not easily or economically replaced.
