Who needs light meters?

When I first became serious with photography, I used a light meter as my Leica view finder and early Nikon did not have built in light meters. That was nearly 40 years ago. In the last year I have rediscovered digital photography. With the ability to immediately evaluate a photo's exposure with the histogram, are light meters still relevant? I am not talking about complex multi-flash shots.
What is the best light meter (assuming I need one) to complement the one in the Mark ll 1D?
Thanks,
JS

I like the Seikonic 558-L (I think that's the model ... the one with the built-in PocketWizard transmitter).

A couple of reasons why I use a light meter outside of the camera:

1) To get a true reading on the actual light hitting the subject. Since I'm often shooting a bride in a white dress and a groom in a dark tux, I can't get an accurate in-camera light reading off of either one of them because they each reflect a different amount of light. Expose for the white dress and the tux disappears into darkness. Expose for the tux and the white dress is blown out. So using a light meter, I hold it up to the couple and get a reading off of the light hitting them and use that to set my exposure.

You can, of course, use your histogram and adjust exposures to avoid the blinkies... so while the light meter saves time, it's not absolutely necessary.

2) On the other hand, when using strobes... there is no way to measure the amount of light coming from a strobe using your in-camera meter. And so you'll either endlessly play with the histogram and the varying the power on each of the strobes. Or... use a light meter and set it up quickly and correctly the first time.

3) The light meter I have has a built-in spot meter as well... so if my subject is distant, I can look thru the spot meter and get a reading on the highlights and the shadows and quickly come up with an exposure that will try to keep both of them in range.

Have fun with that Mark II. I'm jealous!

Very interesting question - especially when you consider the completely different approach one takes when using an incident meter rather than the more common reflective meter as found in cameras.

I have a beautiful Asahi Pentax spotmeter, for which I paid some exhorbitant amount back in the early 80's. I wouldn't give it up for anything, because it's like having a laboratory standard. However, I would never buy one now, because most of the pro-sumer digital camera models (such as my G5) come with a perfectly adequate spot metering capability. About the only thing I use my Pentax spotmeter for these days is just to provide an independent check on my digital cameras.

I still use mine. I find it quite useful to check the EV of a scene, provide incident over reflective metering, and to help me think about what I'm trying to capture. In-camera light metering may be pretty good, but I like the extra control a handheld meter still gives me.

I still use a light meter as well. I have a Sekonic L-508. Obviously it's a necessity for studio lighting, but I also use it for incident metering of natural light and for spot metering in other circumstances.

Of course, I still use the histogram to fine tune my exposures, but I find a separate light meter to be a most valuable tool.

Mark