New To 4x5 Photography - Spotmeter Suggestions

[Alan Edward Klein]

Aaaah. This answers something I've wondered about for years. In his account of the making of the negative for "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico" Ansel said that he couldn't find his light meter, and then remembered the near-constant illumination of the Moon's near-full face in foot-candles, and did the conversion to exposure in his head (which resulted in greatly underexposing the townscape part of the negative, resulting in bleach-redevelop in water bath attempting to bring up that portion without blocking up the Moon -- and still a challenging negative to print).

The moon should be exposed to the Sunny 16 rule as it reflects the sunlight as if it is daytime all the time (assuming the sky is clear). Measuring ground illuminated by the moon would vary based on atmospheric conditions (and moon phase) just as sunlight varies on the ground because of atmospheric conditions, time of day, altitude angle, etc. and why we need a meter to determine the exposure.

 

[John Wiegerink]

I have the Reveni Labs spot meter and I think it’s a brilliant tool. It works exceptionally well, is easy to use and 100% reliable/accurate. I recommend it over the older spot meters, or modern, very expensive ones.

Since I got my Pentax Digital Spot I really haven't looked into other meters and had no reason to. Since reading this post I checked out the Reveni Spot and if I didn't have the Pentax this little meter would be high on my list. It would be ideal for when I walk out the door with one of my old folding 120 cameras and wanted to keep things in a small package. Heck, I might just get one as a backup spot meter?

 

[Lam-Bartll]

As far as a $350 Pentax digital spot meter being "expensive" what term do you use for the price of a box of Kodak TMy-2 400 or 50 sheets of 16x20" enlarging paper?... asking for a friend.

Painful hahaha

Still only really doing enlargement to 8x10, I don't have the space for larger trays in my darkroom at the moment, but yeah I think painful would be the term I'd use.

At the moment I'm shooting whatever the cheapest 4x5 film I could find until I start getting the hang of it then eventually I can have heart attacks over buying some boxes of TMax or HP5 haha

 

[khh]

I managed to find a Sekonic l-758dr locally for an reasonable (though certainly not cheap) price. I also have two Gossen light meters, a Lunasix pro 3 and an old selenium meter, both of which support reflected and incident light metering. Honestly, I mostly stopped carrying the Gossen meters. I just didn't feel they offered any advantage over my phone. I've been happy with the Sekonic though, it does give me information I've no other way to collect. It also support flash metering, which I'm looking forward to trying, as flash lighting is still a kind of dark art to me.

 

[DREW WILEY]

One can have a heart attack even over a cup of coffee these days. So just stop going to Starbucks for a week or so, and you might be able to afford a box of 4x5 film. I don't know if a latte would make as good a developer as Caffenol; I haven't tried either. Here people like to drink Peet's coffee, which is strong enough the etch the inside of a stainless steel darkroom sink.

Otherwise, I doubt something like a Raveni meter is really in the league to be a practical substitute for a Pentax meter. It probably just doesn't have the accuracy, let alone the durability.

 

[Craig]

The discussion is classic. The OP asked about options for spotmeters. So you get input from those who have and use them...to the you don't need one...get a ___________.....we never had them in the '70s.

I think the OP was under the impression that if you shoot LF you need a spotmeter, thus asking for recommendations.

However, a spotmeter is not essential. A lens is essential and a filmholder is essential, a spotmeter is not. If the OP is on a budget, and already has a meter of some sort, be it incident or a 35mm SLR that will work.

Not many 35mm photographers use a spotmeter and get good negatives, so why the need for a spotmeter simply because the film size is bigger?

 

[Alan9940]

Not many 35mm photographers use a spotmeter and get good negatives, so why the need for a spotmeter simply because the film size is bigger?

Can't say how "good" my negatives are (or not), but I use a spot meter with all formats from 35mm to 8x10.

 

[GregY]

Can't say how "good" my negatives are (or not), but I use a spot meter with all formats from 35mm to 8x10.

Me too.....

 

[MattKing]

It helps to think of a spot meter as a specialized tool. It does certain things better than other sorts of meters, sometimes at the expense of other factors like economy or compactness.
I would generally recommend only acquiring one if, in your photography, you encounter the need to take reflective meter readings off of relatively small areas of subjects you can't easily get close too.
If you acquire one, whatever you do, don't fall prey to the temptation to go out looking for photographic subjects that are perfect examples of something that lets you show off your use of your new meter

 

[retina_restoration]

I doubt something like a Raveni meter is really in the league to be a practical substitute for a Pentax meter. It probably just doesn't have the accuracy, let alone the durability.

It's great to have an opinion about a tool you've never used, isn't it?!

 

[Donald Qualls]

The moon should be exposed to the Sunny 16 rule as it reflects the sunlight as if it is daytime all

I agree, but Ansel was probably caught up in trying to get his 8x10 set up on his on-car platform, focus & compose, and set exposure before the Moon dropped into the clouds -- and was already beyond guessing exposure. Or so he seems to imply in the description he wrote of this image in The Negative.

 

[John Wiegerink]

I agree, but Ansel was probably caught up in trying to get his 8x10 set up on his on-car platform, focus & compose, and set exposure before the Moon dropped into the clouds -- and was already beyond guessing exposure. Or so he seems to imply in the description he wrote of this image in The Negative.

Yes, I sure wonder where Ansel pointed his spot meter for Moonrise over Hernandez???

 

[GregY]

Alex Burke also uses a digicam for his large format work exposure determination. Seems faster and cheaper to get the results you want, but I can understand why people wouldn't want to use them (less traditional).

It's only cheaper if you have one..... some folks don't.... (choice of course) but these days $350 doesn't buy much of a digicam and then one more thing to drag around....

 

[GregY]

I just took a look at the Rivian specs, seems to be a good choice, less than a used Minolta or Pentax spot. Looks like it can fit in large pocket. I suspect it is accurate, wounder how durable. My Soligair is getting very long in the tooth, the sensor cell must near the end so maybe.

Rivian costs more than $350 won't fit in a pocket...but is good transport & i hear the batteries last a long time...... auto-correct may not be your friend....

Rivian​

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[Paul Howell]

Aaaah. This answers something I've wondered about for years. In his account of the making of the negative for "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico" Ansel said that he couldn't find his light meter, and then remembered the near-constant illumination of the Moon's near-full face in foot-candles, and did the conversion to exposure in his head (which resulted in greatly underexposing the townscape part of the negative, resulting in bleach-redevelop in water bath attempting to bring up that portion without blocking up the Moon -- and still a challenging negative to print).

In the early years AA used a Weston, maybe II or III, Moonrise was taken in the 40s before he used the newer scientific meter in the 60s. Minor White used a Weston, his early classes and how to books are based on the Weston Meter scale.

 

[GregY]

I think the OP was under the impression that if you shoot LF you need a spotmeter, thus asking for recommendations.

However, a spotmeter is not essential. A lens is essential and a filmholder is essential, a spotmeter is not. If the OP is on a budget, and already has a meter of some sort, be it incident or a 35mm SLR that will work.

Not many 35mm photographers use a spotmeter and get good negatives, so why the need for a spotmeter simply because the film size is bigger?

Craig, the OP has a Sekonic Studio Deluxe & specifically asked for spot meter info...

"The Zone System is something I'd really like to get into, I've been studying it from a few sources and I'd like to try it out with some of my 4x5 work come the summer, which is why I started looking into 1-degree spotmeters."

 

[Craig]

Fair enough, I'm not fully convinced that "I want to use the zone system" logically flows to "I need a spotmeter".

Much depends on the subject matter being photographed and the way the photographer works. It is possible to use the zone system without a spotmeter, Phil Davis gives good examples in his book using an incident meter.

 

[BrianShaw]

In the early years AA used a Weston, maybe II or III, Moonrise was taken in the 40s before he used the newer scientific meter in the 60s. Minor White used a Weston, his early classes and how to books are based on the Weston Meter scale.

Weston II, which features a scale in foot candles, possibly making it easier for him to think in those units.

But remember, there are 2 versions of his story. The more contemporaneous version is that he used the Weston meter and its UA markings in a completely standard way. Later the story became more embellished and more often repeated.

See the “Creation” tab:

Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[DREW WILEY]

AA claims he rapidly calculated the luminance of the moon in his head, and used that as his primary reference is able to retain value gradation in the face of the moon. He didn't have time to meter the foreground. (I believe at that time, he was using an SEI spot meter, which of all things, fairly recently came up for sale as a historic "collectible", but only fetched a small price.) So he stipulated water bath development to try to keep the extremes under control; but that also results in rather splotchy streaky values evident in open portions of the sky which became hell when printing. That might be one of the reasons he later intensified the negative, so he could highly print down much of the sky to almost black, preventing most of the anomalies being seen. It also lent more drama to the scene. If one compares the before & after prints the distinction is quite evident. But ironically, the earlier prints, being a lot more scarce, have become the most expensive ones today.

 

[Sirius Glass]

The moon should be exposed to the Sunny 16 rule as it reflects the sunlight as if it is daytime all the time (assuming the sky is clear). Measuring ground illuminated by the moon would vary based on atmospheric conditions (and moon phase) just as sunlight varies on the ground because of atmospheric conditions, time of day, altitude angle, etc. and why we need a meter to determine the exposure.

The Albedo, the reflected light is not at 100%, so one can approximate that with one stop ===> a factor of 2 darker.

 

[DREW WILEY]

One issue about using an incident meter is that you can't always be in the right spot to make it work. Being out in ruggedness and the weather isn't like being in a studio. You might need to meter something on the other side of a canyon thousands of feet deep, where the lighting is quite different from where you're standing. One degree spot meters are ideal for that. It's not necessarily about the Zone System at all, although spot meters are great for that application too.

 

[GregY]

I think the OP was under the impression that if you shoot LF you need a spotmeter, thus asking for recommendations.

However, a spotmeter is not essential. A lens is essential and a filmholder is essential, a spotmeter is not. If the OP is on a budget, and already has a meter of some sort, be it incident or a 35mm SLR that will work.

Not many 35mm photographers use a spotmeter and get good negatives, so why the need for a spotmeter simply because the film size is bigger?

.....Spotmeter "I've been everywhere".... (in this case Santa Fe N.M.)

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I agree, but Ansel was probably caught up in trying to get his 8x10 set up on his on-car platform, focus & compose, and set exposure before the Moon dropped into the clouds -- and was already beyond guessing exposure. Or so he seems to imply in the description he wrote of this image in The Negative.

Yeah the original negative is pretty bad. Amazing how he dressed up the prints.

 

[DREW WILEY]

retina r. - I'm not bashing anyone's Raveni meter. I even considered if one would be useful as a very portable clip-on meter for my Fuji 6X9 RF's. But here's my thoughts : 1) It's more like a wire sports finder on a Graflex rather than a telescopic crosshair rifle sight. Looking through the lens and into the inner 1 degree circle of a Pentax spot meter, you know exactly where it is aimed. 2) with the Raveni, you're dealing with a tiny dial and tiny peep sight, not so practical for older eyesight and stiff fingers. 3) The Pentax meter has a great proven track record in both reliability and durability. I keep a mint one in the lab for sake of a reference standard to the others, and as a potential reserve; but I also have ones which have survived thousands of miles of rugged high country use in all kinds or weather, and have even been dunked in ice-water streams a couple times. Why gamble with a new design meter I'm not familiar with? 4) I often need to read very precise spots in very high contrast scenes up to 11 or 12 stops of luminance range using films like TMax. Being even half a stop off in terms of shadow and highlight readings can be detrimental to my anticipated print repo standards under those demanding conditions.

I sometimes use TTL metering in my Nikon FM2n, but that's because I've periodically practiced doing that with my Pentax spot meter also along, until I got it right on its own. I don't trust automated TTL metering at all for my own kind of applications; I want full control over every decision, and not consigning any of it to some kind of algorithm.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

It's only cheaper if you have one..... some folks don't.... (choice of course) but these days $350 doesn't buy much of a digicam and then one more thing to drag around....

You can get an old micro 4/3 for two hundred or so.