Also, you can get MUCH closer than 4 stops in either direction with an RB67.
The RB is what I decided to go with since it's still quite a bit cheaper than the same setup in RZ (about 1/2 the price). KEH had a "bargian" grade body, finder, and back (which is actually what eBay camera sellers usually describe as "mint"!) and a 90mm and 180mm lens that I picked up. $65 for the 180/4.5 C. I couldn't pass that up. I can even make a little on this setup by selling it on eBay if I want to upgrade later.
Getting exposure right without a built in meter is pretty darn simple. The light meter app for the iPhone works incredibly well. I "THINK" its equivalent to a 15 degree spot? It even has an incident meter attachment now called Luxi.
This is very likely the direction I'll be heading. I have it with me always and I'm using it always, whether I have another camera in my hand or not. I like to get the "Instagramy" shots that I can post to social media but still use a high-resolution camera for the keepers.
I'm a complete amateur compared to most people here, but any development technique should be used as a tool for specific situations. Not as a crutch because you are too lazy to try to meter a scene.
That being said, with properly processed B&W film, you can probably get a printable negative unless exposure is WAY off, or you completely blow out highlights or fill in shadows.
I would probably not characterize my question as an attempt to "slack off".
I was just noting that stand development differs significantly from traditional development in how the developer actually interacts with the emulsion which is why the long development times don't differ from one roll to the next. If that's the case, then even if I obsess over "proper" exposure, my development method will, in some ways, counteract the effort I put into getting an exposure onto the emulsion--an exposure that would turn out completely differently by using a 1:50 solution and developing with constant agitation and normal development times.
I'm not trying to shirk my duty as an artist to craft the best product I can. Quite the contrary. I'm just thinking through the implications of a development process that seems to neutralize variations in ISO, push/pull adjustments, and even minor variations in frames that are exposed for highlights and don't contain detail in the shadows (or the reverse). It seems that, for a given ISO of film, pull or push adjustments are only really effective if using a much stronger developer solution and plenty of agitation to get fresh developer into contact with the emulsion evenly across the frame. Since the whole idea of stand development is to develop the different zones of the exposure in a way that can't be achieved when agitating, it seems to follow that "pushing" ISO 400 to 1600 in stand development doesn't actually do what we think it does if we're still thinking in terms of normal development techniques that continually develop all zones of the exposure throughout the development time.
There's a point at which the film emulsion you are using will stop recording information because the highlights are completely blown and there's a point at which you have to give it enough light to start recording details. If the purpose of stand development is to bring out as much of this information as possible from both ends of the film's capabilities, then it seems logical (though whether it is or not is what I was trying to get at
that under or over exposure of a stand-developed negative (and by that I mean, very precisely, deviation from the rated "norm" of the emulsion) will matter a lot less when the developer interacts with the different tonalities in the exposure at different rates throughout the frame than it would for negatives in which subtle details at the highlight end of the film's capability to record that information is subsequently developed out by contact with fresh developer.
If I am to accurately and consistently expose a negative that will be stand developed, then I was simply wondering if spending extra time to achieve a "perfect" exposure according the light meter would be essentially wasted and if I should instead focus on making sure that as much of the contrast of the scene as I want to capture is recorded onto the film I'm using based on the rated ISO.