The Lumu light meter dongle turns your iPhone into a light meter.

Even for photographers who would not even think about taking pictures with a smartphone camera the mini computer in your pocket can be, with the right accessories, an extremely useful tool. The Lumu light meter is a great example for this. The tiny device plugs into the headphone socket and, with the help of the dedicated Lumu app, turns your smartphone into a fully-fledged light meter that can help enhance your understanding of a scene's lighting situation. 

So far the Lumu has only been working as an incident light meter which reads the light falling on the subject rather than the light reflected off the subject. This gives generally a more accurate reading than the reflective built-in meters in most digital cameras. However, in certain situations, for example when shooting with an older film camera that does not come with a built-in meter, having an external reflective light meter at your disposal can be very useful as well. Therefore Lumu has now updated its app for it to work as a reflective light meter, turning Lumu into a pocketable and affordable solution for all your light metering needs. In reflective mode the Lumu app uses the iPhone camera rather than the Lumu hardware dongle to measure light levels. So even if you don't own the attachment, you can still use the app.  

The Lumu device is tiny and can be carried anywhere.
It slots into the headphone socket of your smartphone.

Apart from the addition of the reflective meter mode the Lumu app has also been optimized for use with the latest iPhone models 6 and 6 Plus. There is also an Android version but Lumu has ceased support for the Google mobile OS. That said, you should still be able to use the Lumu Dongle and incident meter mode with many current Android phones. We've tried the Lumu meter with the iPhone and have found it to be a precise and useful tool in our testing. If you think it could be useful in your photographic workflow head over to the Lumu website now. The company is offering a 30% discount on the dongle for a few days to celebrate the first anniversary of its successful Kickstarter campaign. The Lumu app is available for download in the Apple App Store.