This sleek and tiny light meter attaches to your film camera’s hot shoe

If you’re into film photography and have a camera without a light meter, it can be pretty tricky to get the exposure right. Lime One is a neat-looking light meter that should solve the problem.  It’s a small reflective light meter, and it’s mounted straight on your camera’s accessory shoe.

Lime One is created by Johannes Heberlein, a mechatronics engineer from Nuremberg, Germany. “When metering for analog cameras, I got frustrated using clunky external meters or smartphone apps, where you have to take out the phone, search and start the app and then adjust settings before taking a photo,” he explains. “Because of this, I decided to create a fast to use light meter that is compact enough to permanently live on my camera.” Lime One is the first “consumer product” he has launched, and judging from the Kickstarter, people seem to like it! $40,414 has already been pledged out of the $29,400 goal.

I think that Lime one looks pretty neat, but most of all, I think it could be a useful gadget for film photographers. Here are some of the basic specs:

• Fast operation and start up, stored previous settings
• Four modes: aperture priority, shutter priority, manual mode, exposure value
• Knurled control wheel to set parameters quickly
• Change secondary parameters by holding the button when turning the wheel
• Anodized aluminum body and control wheel
• Uses the standard accessory shoe mount
• Uses a standard battery (CR2032)

You can get the Lime One through Kickstarter. Early Bird price for the first 100 supporters is €99 (~$117). The Kickstarter Standard price is €129 (~$150) for just the light meter and €149 (~$175) for one with accessories. Make sure to check out the Kickstarter campaign for more details, and you can also find them on the website. Shipping is limited to Northern America and Europe, and it should start in April 2021.