Hi,
 
I want to transfer a lighting levels contour map from graph paper to cad but have no experience of this.
 
Any advice appreciated

Scan the map, create a tiff file.
Insert the tiff image into AutoCAD. Scale it to true size using reference linework in the tiff
Trace over the contours with polylines.
 
If you have lots of tracing to do, consider getting "raster to vector" conversion software.  Image needs toi be "clean" for this method to not require a lot of cleanup.