New To 4x5 Photography - Spotmeter Suggestions

Chan Tran said:

By the dial I mean This
View attachment 397775

All of the meters I mentioned can display the LV number so you make a dial just like that with the zone scale replacing the IRA scale. Now you can use any of the other meters take a measurement and get the readout in LV (EV @ ISO100) then you can set that value on the dial.

Click to expand...

CT.... It makes no difference & it's really sidetracked the discussion here.

Chan Tran said:

I don't say which way is better but what I am saying is that the dial sells. More people like the dial and that what drives the price of the Pentax meters up.

Click to expand...

CT they're not made anymore. Use what you like. Who knows who uses what? "More people like the dial" is just an internet opinion. A few posts back you said you preferred the Minolta Spotmeter M ....where's the dial ?

"Yes I did buy the Minolta Spotmeter M in the early 80's for $300 instead of the Pentax Digital Spotmeter for $270 or the Spotmeter V for only $149..... And I agree I like the Minolta much better."

GregY said:

CT.... It makes no difference & it's really sidetracked the discussion here.


CT they're not made anymore. Use what you like. Who knows who uses what? "More people like the dial" is just an internet opinion. A few posts back you said you preferred the Minolta Spotmeter M ....where's the dial ?

"Yes I did buy the Minolta Spotmeter M in the early 80's for $300 instead of the Pentax Digital Spotmeter for $270 or the Spotmeter V for only $149..... And I agree I like the Minolta much better."

Click to expand...

I do prefer the Minolta as I don't need any computation of the dial or even the Minolta digital processing power. What I do want is accurate LV readings. However, I found that more people like the Pentax and the reason is the dial. The Pentax is no more accurate than the Minolta (at least it has less resolution) but they are sold for more in the used market even though when new they are less expesive.
So since more people like the dial I am thinking of selling the dial by itself.

I can’t wait to find out who gives up first.

BrianShaw said:

I can’t wait to find out who gives up first.

Click to expand...

Me (leaves shaking his head....). & how about that Richard Avedon guy

GregY said:

Me (leaves shaking his head....). & how about that Richard Avedon guy

Click to expand...

That put a smile on my dial

The IRE scale is considerably more competent and useful than any zone scale. IRE 1 indexing (at box speed) is where the zone-obsessed will end up anyway after wasting lots of materials on pointless testing, without ever daring to admit it. Basic sensitometry is much easier and faster to learn today than the zone system ever was - and you understand very quickly that incident and spot meters are neither superior nor inferior to each other, but that spot meters are rather more dependent on the operator understanding what they should be pointing them at.

That's the whole idea of a narrow-reading spot meter. You're comparing specific points. What you do with that information is another thing. Some people apply it to various Zone models; some do not. The IRE scale has its own set of usage, which might or might not match one's own practical model. For those of us who do both color and black white photography, the placement of the readings themselves necessarily differs case by case. No one shoe size fits all, even when using the very same meter for everything.

But yes, after learning various ZS models, I landed up with a more direct visualize the specific curve in my head approach instead. That takes some experience, film by film; but in the long run it's a lot simpler, intuitively.

Pentax vs Minolta? Having used both, I doubt the Minolta Spotmeter F was actually any more accurate; it just gave more specific readouts. Frankly, both style meters read identically over their full range. As a stated earlier, I found the exterior manual dial of the Pentax quicker and more intuitive to work with.

I never personally saw any sense to those stick-on Zone labels; but it they do help other people, who am I to criticize?

I'll give the same advice I always do on these threads: get a Sekonic L-758D(R) and be done with it.

GLS said:

I'll give the same advice I always do on these threads: get a Sekonic L-758D(R) and be done with it.

Click to expand...

+1.

I currently have a Pentax V Zone VI Modified meter that I use for calibrating film at home, and a Pentax Digital Zone VI Modified meter that I use when photographing using black and white film in the field. The former enables me to measure small areas to about the nearest 10th EV when I do my testing. For me, readings in 1/3rd stop increments works fine in the field, but not for the testing that I do at home.

Both of these meters were simultaneously calibrated by Richard Ritter to help assure their agreement with each other.

That said, any meter that gives me EV's is fine in the field. While I now have Pentax meters, I've used two different types of Minolta in the field.

I also have a Sekonic 508 with a 1 degree spot meter, that I could use in a pinch. But for me, they're cumbersome, because I'm unable to read EV's looking through the view finder. So evaluating a scene, there's a lot of inconvenient back and forth between using the viewfinder and having to look at the display.

My first meter was a Soligor 1 degree that I purchased decades ago. But even brand new, I detected right out of the starting gate, that the sensitive area in the meter did not align with the circle in the viewfinder. So back it went to the store, and I haven't used, nor considered purchasing a Soligor since.