Light Meter?

yo what type of a camera are you using?
most have built in light meters thats what ive always used, but check youtube or google your specific meter , cause i havent reallly ever used one, ha

... Ask your dad?

It's a pretty straightforward thing as long as you know how to mess with your aperature / iso / shutter settings in full manual. Just point the bulb of the meter as close to the object you're shooting as possible with the it pointed towards your camera and meter the light, then you can change the settings around on the meter to your liking and it will show you more acuarately than your camera where everything needs to be....
That was confusing so for example, you KNOW you need to shoot at an aperature of 5.6 with an ISO of 200, you put those settings in, meter the light, and it will tell you what your shutter speed needs to be. Its much more acurate than your camera and very usefull on snow or in very light pollouted situations where its hard to meter one object with your cameras spot meter. Orrr for flashes obviously, but I don't think you're there yet.

And to make your life even easier....

http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to/video/how-to-use-a-light-meter-161895/

i'm shooting with a D100.

I never understood the point of a light meter, are they better than the ones in our dslrs, or did cameras just not used to have internal light meters.

Sorry Im so ignorant on this ha, Im better at video cameras..

the older film cameras did not have light meters built in so this was their use. you point the light recieving end at the camera to read the amount of light coming onto the subject and adjust your camera according to that.
--a good amount of old school large format (8x10) cameras dont have meters built in.

the only other use i know for them is 16 and 8 mm movie cameras that dont have them built in.

yo seantom let me see your camera

One of the main uses for a light meters is to get your contrast ratios correct when shooting with lights.