Buying a used Pentax Digital Spotmeter questions

[JBrunner]

When did George (Quality Light Metrics) start limiting his business to just Pentax meters? Last time I talked to him he worked an all sorts of meters.

He does my SpectraCine's.

 

[BrianShaw]

He does my Westons too.

 

[Joe VanCleave]

He's done my Gossen Luna Pro F.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

A "miscalibrated" spot meter!? So you're thinking it might have been trod on, chucked around, dropped, left out int the sun...?
True, digital spot meters (or incident/reflective/spot/flash meters) do have the provision to be calibrated based on lengthy, proven experience by the photographer to a specific situation (my own is calibrated to +0.5 baseline),true also, they can be reset to factory defaults, if that will put you at ease. Old style analogue meters are not a reliable investment given their primitive measurement devices that do deteriorate over time. A rudimentary test of a spot meter (or all functions of a hand-held meter) would be to use alongside a reliable SLR, also with spot metering e.g. Olympus OM4, any one of the high end Nikons etc. The readings do not necessarily have to be identical but they should be close measured from the same position and looking at the same place.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Perhaps that was just hyperbole, but it's what he told me about a year ago when I sent him a spotmeter that fell into a creek. Maybe he's winding things down, maybe not. I'm obviously not in
the neighborhood. Doing more than one kind of meter would make sense esp since Pentax is no
longer actually mfg meters. I've got three of them and certainly wouldn't want any of them reading
differently from the others, though one of them has about mechanically had it. I use these for all
formats, all kinds of film.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Mr Du Jour - I've found my spotmeters to be more accurate and predictable than any TTL meter system. For one thing, they CAN be individually calibrated; for another thing, they don't receive
a reading after jumping thru all kinds of additional hoops that have nothing to do with the basic
light measurement itself. And I like what a spotmeter is so good at - comparing distinct areas of
a scene and quickly placing them on a relative scale as well as basepoints of shadow and highlight
threshold. Good for more than just Zone System work. Now when I'm just out for a casual walk in
the rain, I might just tuck a Nikon under my parka along with a film with a bit of forgiveness to the
characteristic curve, and use thru-the-lens metering. But at something like $20 per pop for a dev
sheet of 8x10 color film, do you think I'm going to risk that?

 

[MattKing]

Folks:

Isn't the primary question whether or not a meter is consistent and linear (where linearity is expected and required)?

IMHO calibration to an exact standard is only useful if all of the rest of your workflow, equipment and materials are also calibrated.

Checking whether a meter is working properly and is reasonably accurate is important.

 

[lxdude]

p.s. LA isn't half as bad as you make it sound.

I hear you really came to like LA back when you were playing for the Lakers...