As for light meter, if you're a hack like me and you've got things rigged up all over the place you can actually use the camera's display to guide you on this and do final adjustments with your raw converter. On the Rebel, the display will alert you to pixels that are either totally black or totally white. Using this plus the histogram and some knowledge you can get a decent exposure. Now it may be pointless to teach your students how to be able to adapt their equipment when there are many devices that will do things more easily. I'm sure all your students will be able to afford the best equipment on the market. The kind that would never, ever malfunction during a shoot 400 miles from a photo store at 1:00am on a Sunday with the photos due at 8:00 am Monday.
