Wynn Bullock and Zone System, as told by Edna Bullock

[Lachlan Young]

What's the difference between a Pentax digital camera and a Pentax spot meter?

The Pentax Spot Meters offer easy indexing of exposure readings in a clear and comprehensible manner using the IRE scale (it's under where the easily impressionable stick zone stickers), and the same scale makes it easy to understand the usable straight-line range of transparency films. The only cameras with similarly useful indexability are the Olympus OM-3 and OM-4 (and the Ti variants) which have IRE based shadow/ highlight indexing buttons. Matrix meters were really invented to try & help not mess up transparency exposure in lighting environments that had backlighting/ strong contrasts/ difficult & fast moving situations where manual metering would waste time or be plain dangerous.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Digital cameras provide spot metering either in Aperture or Shutter priority or manual or automatic modes. I don't know which mode your Pentax meter uses. But you could set a digital camera with the same priority mode.

What's the difference between a Pentax digital camera and a Pentax spot meter?

I use the Pentax Digital Spot Meter for light reading when I want to bring out the some shadow details, otherwise I use my camera's light meters.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Alan and others : A Pentax digital spotmeter just means the readout is in red LED rather than a needle and scale. This marketing designation was around decades before digital cameras, and has no relation to current digital jargon. No software is involved. All the settings and interpretation scales are completely manual. It's quite a bit more objective than so-called spotmeter functions inside cameras, which can be affected by all kinds of intervening factors, and will obviously differ model to model and even lens to lens. These Pentax spotmeters are still in demand by movie film crews, for example, because they are consistent regardless of the filming gear being used.

I don't even own a camera with "aperture priority" or "shutter priority" auto-anything. Even my Nikon is fully manual. That's the way I want it. No redundant nonsense. If one is a sports photographer or photojournalist specializing in riots, or something like that, I can understand having some bells and whistles. But to me, all those kind of supplementary features just get in the way. I want an undistracted ground glass image, not an airplane cockpit experience.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I don't even own a camera with "aperture priority" or "shutter priority" auto-anything. Even my Nikon is fully manual. That's the way I want it. No redundant nonsense. If one is a sports photographer or photojournalist specializing in riots, or something like that, I can understand having some bells and whistles. But to me, all those kind of supplementary features just get in the way. I want an undistracted ground glass image, not an airplane cockpit experience.

I have almost never used either the aperture priority or shutter priority per se, I almost always choose the f/stop and shutter speed myself. So my my Nikons might just as well be manual and of course the Hasselblad is neither aperture or shutter priority, I choose the f/stop and shutter speed. Basically old school.

 

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

I just noticed Raghu's question, so apologize for the delay in responding. No, I do no use any kind of onboard TTL camera metering. I've done experimental comparisons enough times to realize that I want to think for myself and not presume a camera program can do it better, because it can't. I use handheld Pentax digital spotmeters for all my camera needs, all the way from 35 mm to 8X10 formats. And I'll never buy a self-driving car either, if they ever catch on. I want complete control of the outcome.

Ok, I can fully understand and appreciate your viewpoint. I also understand that matrix meters are supposedly biased towards getting the right exposure for transparencies as Lachlan pointed out. Was just curious to know if any contemporary proponents of Zone System and its variants did a comparative study with real examples and demonstrated the superiority of Zone System. Surely someone must have found out that the negatives they got with matrix metering didn't help them in getting a print close to their previsualized print.

 

[Vaughn]

I use a Pentax digital spot -- also have the Pentax Spot Meter V (the non 'digital' model with a needle). I like the digital read-out because it is a bit tougher than a sensitive needle arrangement for field work..the digital meter is also significantly smaller than the Meter V.

I am learning through experience -- filled with years of bad negs and great negs and almost negs -- and making prints (alt processes) from them. In most cases I set those detailed shadows a couple stops darker than the meter reading, knowing there will be smaller darker shadow areas even the one-degree won't single out from any distance back. Then I check out the high lights and interesting mid-tones values. This is an important step in my visualization process that continues after the image is on the GG. I like to follow with the meter to get a good understanding of the arrangement of light values of the composition. Color in the landscape can be confusing and throw off one's expected balance of light (a dominate red object blending into the background in a B&W image, some leaves soak up an unexpected amount of light). Since I do not burn or dodge, the light values across the scene need to be balanced or otherwise taken into consideration in my composition.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Was just curious to know if any contemporary proponents of Zone System and its variants did a comparative study with real examples and demonstrated the superiority of Zone System. Surely someone must have found out that the negatives they got with matrix metering didn't help them in getting a print close to their previsualized print.

You're worrying over errant aspects here. Quite a bit of the time they should probably give pretty similar exposures. The problems arise when people come to believe one or the other is the only solution. Matrix is essentially an evolution/ mixture of centre-weighted & spot metering to try & reduce the need for extra/ external metering in certain contrast situations via some degree of recognising scene contrast range in different regions of the image. It acts like a black-box without communicating any scene contrast range information to the operator, only an exposure. That's it. The rest is marketing. Indexed spot (or incident) metering is not as fast as a single matrix read-out (but very much faster than the time-wasters who attempt to use SLR meters as half-assed spot meters to take 50 irrelevant readings), but it lets you place your detailed shadows (or highlights) precisely where you want them - and you can easily (with two clicks and a second or two of adding) read the scene contrast - with the fancier Gossen, Minolta etc ones, you can do most of this automatically (and excessively). With neg films, you will discover that shadow values change less (for much of the day) than people want/ need you to believe. Adjust process thereafter if really needed (for B&W neg) to adjust highlights. A decent spot meter is also a lot lighter than any of the cameras with matrix meters.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

The Pentax Spot Meters offer easy indexing of exposure readings in a clear and comprehensible manner using the IRE scale (it's under where the easily impressionable stick zone stickers), and the same scale makes it easy to understand the usable straight-line range of transparency films. The only cameras with similarly useful indexability are the Olympus OM-3 and OM-4 (and the Ti variants) which have IRE based shadow/ highlight indexing buttons. Matrix meters were really invented to try & help not mess up transparency exposure in lighting environments that had backlighting/ strong contrasts/ difficult & fast moving situations where manual metering would waste time or be plain dangerous.

I had been using a Minolta IIIf Autometer for decades with a 10 degree "spot". When I bought my 4x5, I decided to try using my Olympus E-PL1 micro 4/3 camera. It has spot metering as well as matrix and center weighted. If you extend the 24-70mm zoom, the spot reading is around 1-3 degrees by my calculation. If you put on a bigger zoom, you'd decrease the spot even more, something I haven't bothered with. I decided to try it because I didn't want to buy another meter. Also, I got the idea from Alex Burke who uses a camera as well for metering his film shots.

I'm sure a dedicated spot meter is more efficient and simpler. But I get other benefits from a camera including being able to view the scene in the LED display in BW, framing the composition through the viewfinder, and quickly determining what LF lens I need. I do that even before I open the tripod. Saves a lot of time and false setups. I also use it to record my settings and additional details about my shot. I can transcribe my notes at home and take a quick still of it as well. On the downside, it's heavier and bulkier than a dedicated meter. Also, with the E=PL1, if I use aperture priority, the smallest I can set is f/22. So I have to keep that in mind when I transfer the settings to the film camera.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I should add that I don't do my own development. I send it out to a lab. I also use center weighted more often.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

You're worrying over errant aspects here. Quite a bit of the time they should probably give pretty similar exposures. The problems arise when people come to believe one or the other is the only solution. Matrix is essentially an evolution/ mixture of centre-weighted & spot metering to try & reduce the need for extra/ external metering in certain contrast situations via some degree of recognising scene contrast range in different regions of the image. It acts like a black-box without communicating any scene contrast range information to the operator, only an exposure. That's it. The rest is marketing. Indexed spot (or incident) metering is not as fast as a single matrix read-out (but very much faster than the time-wasters who attempt to use SLR meters as half-assed spot meters to take 50 irrelevant readings), but it lets you place your detailed shadows (or highlights) precisely where you want them - and you can easily (with two clicks and a second or two of adding) read the scene contrast - with the fancier Gossen, Minolta etc ones, you can do most of this automatically (and excessively). With neg films, you will discover that shadow values change less (for much of the day) than people want/ need you to believe. Adjust process thereafter if really needed (for B&W neg) to adjust highlights. A decent spot meter is also a lot lighter than any of the cameras with matrix meters.

Although my camera can use spot, the truth is I only use it to see areas that are neutral. Since I shoot both chromes (mainly) as well as BW negative, here is my current procedure. It seems to work but I;m still working on developing it. I set the camera for center weighted and frame my picture. If the picture is too dark or too light or if the histogram is clipped, I'll move the camera until the exposure is "right" and the histogram is centered. I'll then take off about half stop if shooting chromes and add a half stop if BW if it appears I'm clipping. I'll have to adjust in high contrast scenes such as bright skies and shaded landscapes and add filters as needed.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

How do you use your spot meters with chromes?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

This is both heresy and blasphemy to Drew

Well, I'm still trying to figure out how to see upside down on the ground glass.

 

[DonW]

Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.

Hunter S. Thompson

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Don’t believe everything you read about that either. It is common for people to try very hard to convince themselves the upside down, backward image is beneficial. That can indeed be the case sometimes, but most of the time it’s just the usual BS.

Well, as I said earlier, I use a digital camera to compose the picture first. I sometimes use a separate viewfinder that attaches to my 4x5 that turns everything right-side up, although it's a little darker. So I do cheat a little. When I use my MF camera, a Mamiya RB67, I use an eye-level viewfinder. I couldn't get used to its left-right reversal when looking for and aiming with its waist-level viewfinder. I agree with you that aesthetics are best seen right-side up. That's how the brain works.

 

[Vaughn]

That is not how the brain 'works'. Our brain flips over and reverses the image signals it receives from our two eyes, blends the two signals together for limited depth perception and creates a gestalt of constantly changing light values and focusing distances...a mix of visual signals strung together to create a visual world within itself that we like to call reality. That would be a bit closer to how our brains work.

After a long session under the darkcloth early on, I brought my head out from the under the darkcloth, and for a split second, 'reality' was the one that was upside down. There is the classic experiment where people wore glasses that flipped everything upside down. It took very little time for them to get use to it and for it become normal. It took a longer time to re-adjust back after taking the glasses off. Our lazy brains prefer upside down and backwards -- less effort needed to interpret signals from the eyes perhaps.

If you are pleased with your results, Alan, meter any way you wish and enjoy. Photography can be a fun hobby.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I should add that I don't do my own development. I send it out to a lab. I also use center weighted more often.

This is both heresy and blasphemy to Drew

We do what we can do with what we have and enjoy what we accomplish.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I had been using a Minolta IIIf Autometer for decades with a 10 degree "spot". When I bought my 4x5, I decided to try using my Olympus E-PL1 micro 4/3 camera. It has spot metering as well as matrix and center weighted. If you extend the 24-70mm zoom, the spot reading is around 1-3 degrees by my calculation. If you put on a bigger zoom, you'd decrease the spot even more, something I haven't bothered with. I decided to try it because I didn't want to buy another meter. Also, I got the idea from Alex Burke who uses a camera as well for metering his film shots.

I'm sure a dedicated spot meter is more efficient and simpler. But I get other benefits from a camera including being able to view the scene in the LED display in BW, framing the composition through the viewfinder, and quickly determining what LF lens I need. I do that even before I open the tripod. Saves a lot of time and false setups. I also use it to record my settings and additional details about my shot. I can transcribe my notes at home and take a quick still of it as well. On the downside, it's heavier and bulkier than a dedicated meter. Also, with the E=PL1, if I use aperture priority, the smallest I can set is f/22. So I have to keep that in mind when I transfer the settings to the film camera.

Before I bought my spot meter I had been known to use my Nikon 28mm to 300mm lens on my Nikon F100 as a spot meter for my Hasselblad.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Well, I'm still trying to figure out how to see upside down on the ground glass.

We can and I have spent too much time sweating getting the shadow details and not spending enough time looking at the unwanted objects showing up on the ground glass!

 

[Sirius Glass]

Don’t believe everything you read about that either. It is common for people to try very hard to convince themselves the upside down, backward image is beneficial. That can indeed be the case sometimes, but most of the time it’s just the usual BS.

I could not and still do not like to deal with left right reversals with the WLF, so when I bought my Hasselblad I also purchased the PME prism as the same time. No longer moving in the wrong direction to track a moving subject.

 

[Vaughn]

I could not and still do not like to deal with left right reversals with the WLF, so when I bought my Hasselblad I also purchased the PME prism as the same time. No longer moving in the wrong direction to track a moving subject.

When I checked out TLR cameras to students, I would have them focus on me standing 6 to 8 feet away, ask them to keep me in the viewer, then I'd move to my right. Get them use to the idea right away.
I learned photography with a Rolleiflex. I quickly got use to the backwards image and have no issues with it. Granted redwoods don't move sideways very often.

And learning that way made the shift to LF cameras easy for me, although their image on the ground glass is just upside-down and not backwards. After 40 years of using LF cameras, the orientation of the image on the GG is a non-issue.

 

[Sirius Glass]

When I checked out TLR cameras to students, I would have them focus on me standing 6 to 8 feet away, ask them to keep me in the viewer, then I'd move to my right. Get them use to the idea right away.
I learned photography with a Rolleiflex. I quickly got use to the backwards image and have no issues with it. Granted redwoods don't move sideways very often.

And learning that way made the shift to LF cameras easy for me, although their image on the ground glass is just upside-down and not backwards. After 40 years of using LF cameras, the orientation of the image on the GG is a non-issue.

When I was selling cameras to work though college, my father who had given me several cast off tlrs had bought a Mamiya C2, then traded up to a C33. I told him that the best thing he could do for himself was to buy a Porro Prism. Once he tried it on, he never removed it. I worked with the tlrs for about five years as a teenager, but I just was always annoyed by the reversal messing up a school sport game for the high school year book.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Once again, Michael has shown his basic ignorance of proper view camera technique. He made the frequent mistake of buying the wrong model camera for where he lives in Canada. He should have bought a northern hemisphere model instead. As it turns out, he apparently has a southern hemisphere view camera which renders a right-side-up ground glass image south of the equator, but upside-down in the north. Well, what if you happen to be photographing right on the equator?... that's what reversible backs are for, seeing the image sideways.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Although my camera can use spot, the truth is I only use it to see areas that are neutral. Since I shoot both chromes (mainly) as well as BW negative, here is my current procedure. It seems to work but I;m still working on developing it. I set the camera for center weighted and frame my picture. If the picture is too dark or too light or if the histogram is clipped, I'll move the camera until the exposure is "right" and the histogram is centered. I'll then take off about half stop if shooting chromes and add a half stop if BW if it appears I'm clipping. I'll have to adjust in high contrast scenes such as bright skies and shaded landscapes and add filters as needed.

That seems like a lot of work to me. You can (and should) be able to do it with a very quick single (indexed) meter reading, either for transparency or negs. Pretty much any meter can be made to do this (it's literally a simple transposition), but the Pentax digital spot meter has a highly intuitive interface in the form of the IRE scale. Incident metering (used appropriately for shadow keying if needed) should agree very closely to spot metering.

How do you use your spot meters with chromes?

Meter the brightest highlight you want detail in, index the EV number to the the highlight key (essentially IRE 100 or +2 1/3 stops over a 'midtone'), done. Effectively same deal as an incident reading.

If you are worried about shadow detail retention, you can sweep over the shadows and see where they land - if they are about 5 stops below that indexed highlight they'll start to crush.

 

[jtk]

That seems like a lot of work to me. You can (and should) be able to do it with a very quick single (indexed) meter reading, either for transparency or negs. Pretty much any meter can be made to do this (it's literally a simple transposition), but the Pentax digital spot meter has a highly intuitive interface in the form of the IRE scale. Incident metering (used appropriately for shadow keying if needed) should agree very closely to spot metering.



Meter the brightest highlight you want detail in, index the EV number to the the highlight key (essentially IRE 100 or +2 1/3 stops over a 'midtone'), done. Effectively same deal as an incident reading.

If you are worried about shadow detail retention, you can sweep over the shadows and see where they land - if they are about 5 stops below that indexed highlight they'll start to crush.

I generally prefer incident over spot because for me spot is too fussy with most people-pictures.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I generally prefer incident over spot because for me spot is too fussy with most people-pictures.

I prefer incident for portraits and the white on white background and black on black background photographs. I use the spot meter for making Zone System measurement for getting certain chosen shadow details. Otherwise indexed or averaging light meters without the sky is my go to method.