I often use a Canon compact point & shoot as a light meter when shooting with manual film cameras.
Sometimes I even manage to get a decent photo with the compact.
Here I was using a cheap Canon compact point & shoot camera as a light meter while shooting around Sydney Harbour with my medium format Mamiya 645 SLR.
This old Mamiya 645 SLR is a big, heavy camera. It's fully manual, with no light meter. (I do have a power winder for it, but it takes a dozen AA batteries, and adds way too much size & weight to take out into the field).
The tripod is an old aluminium Manforotto tripod - it's big, heavy, versatile and solid as a rock. This things holds any camera as steady as you could hope for.
The lenses for this camera are all really sharp, but all primes lenses (meaning they're not zoom lenses - they're fixed at one focal length each. If you want a wide angle shot, you have to put a wide angle lens on, if it's a portrait you have to put a longer lens on.
So if you want some versatility you end up carrying the camera body, plus half a dozen lenses, which are also really heavy, plus a tripod, because unless you're shooting in bright sunlight with fast film, it's too heavy to hand hold even a reasonable shutter speeds - anything below 1/125th sec can get shaky.
Throw in a box or two of film, some filters, cable release, pen & paper, tripod etc etc ....
It's a lot of gear to drag around!
Compact camera as a light meter
This is a great technique. You have to set the ISO on the digital camera to the same as the film you're using, then take a shot with the digital camera, check the exposure on the screen, adjust shutter speed/aperture until you get the result you looking for, the transfer those settings to your manual camera.
Of course, some films behave differently under different lighting conditions, but it's all about getting to know your tools and leveraging the quirks of one film or lens to your advantage.
Levels & curves were tweaked in PhotoShop