Zone Scale for Pentax Digital Spotmeter

[RalphLambrecht]

A couple years ago I stumbled onto a Pentax digital spotmeter that looked completely unused and checked it against my other spotmeters before purchasing it.
It was right on. But it has one of those Zone scales stuck on it, and immediately removed it. What's the point? You've already got a factory triangle mark pointing out
mid-gray or Zone V. Each EV plus or minus equates to one Zone exactly. Its easy enough to count two or three or four. You don't need a college degree to do that.
And what makes you think the straight-line section of all films is the same. God didn't create the cosmos in just eight equally-spaced segments of light, and frankly,
neither did Kodak! If I'm shooting Pan F, I'm concerned about Zones 3-7, dynamically. If it's TMax, more like Zone 1 through 9. With something like discontinued
Bergger 200, easily 0 thru 12 without needing to resort to scrunching the values thru minus processing. Why would I want relevant numbers on the meter scale
covered with a sticker?

Don't tell God how to divide up the universe.

 

[DREW WILEY]

When the Greeks discovered the Golden Mean, I can't recollect the number eight being involved in that ratio system. Guess that disqualifies me too for using 8x10 film.

 

[Darko Kamer]

I couldn't help but laugh when I read this, hear! hear! Drew. Great post!.The zone system seems like it's all been over complicated by many, when most of time it's all about just counting up or down by a number equal to or smaller than 3 stops. I applaud the zone system creators and those that extended it further, writing more books, modifying meters, etc; but in reality that creates unnessessary confusion when most of the time is about counting up or down by small numbers. Perhaps I'm missing something or over simplfying, but that is the way I see it. Love the great discussions on APUG, Cheers darko

A couple years ago I stumbled onto a Pentax digital spotmeter that looked completely unused and checked it against my other spotmeters before purchasing it.
It was right on. But it has one of those Zone scales stuck on it, and immediately removed it. What's the point? You've already got a factory triangle mark pointing out
mid-gray or Zone V. Each EV plus or minus equates to one Zone exactly. Its easy enough to count two or three or four. You don't need a college degree to do that.
And what makes you think the straight-line section of all films is the same. God didn't create the cosmos in just eight equally-spaced segments of light, and frankly,
neither did Kodak! If I'm shooting Pan F, I'm concerned about Zones 3-7, dynamically. If it's TMax, more like Zone 1 through 9. With something like discontinued
Bergger 200, easily 0 thru 12 without needing to resort to scrunching the values thru minus processing. Why would I want relevant numbers on the meter scale
covered with a sticker?

 

[ic-racer]

You meter shows f27 and want 2 and a half times less exposure, your shutter speed for f64 is how much less??

 

[Darko Kamer]

You count the shutter speed per F Stop from the meter; meters tell you the shutter speeds at numerous apertures for a given reading (at least mine do) not just F27 as in your example; so you can just count up/down the shutter speeds to set the exposure appropriately. Increasing shutter speed by one stop allows half as much less light to fall on the film at a given aperture. Its that simple.

 

[Darko Kamer]

You count the shutter speed per F Stop from the meter; meters tell you the shutter speeds at numerous apertures for a given reading (at least mine do) not just F27 as in your example; so you can just count up/down the shutter speeds to set the exposure appropriately. Increasing shutter speed by one stop allows half as much less light to fall on the film at a given aperture. Its that simple.

But thats just setting exposure; ... guess where I'm going re zone system is all you have to do in many cases is meter the part of your scene that is the brightest area where you want some highlight details and meter that and set your camera exposure to two or three more stops of light... Or b) find the darkest part of your scene where you still want some details and set exposure to one or two stops less light. In many cases for an outdoor scene doing both a) and b) arrive at the same camera exposure setting. You don't even need a fancy dancy spot meter, if you can walk into the scene and hold your reflective meter 6 inches or so away from the subject in that area and take a reflective reading it appears it will be a good enough reading to apply to the count up/down rules above, at least that is what I've found. I'm talking about outdoor scenes with subjects pretty close, mountain ranges etc , subjects far away you'd need a spot meter. These simple rules seem a heck of lot simpler than reading and trying to carry all the info into the field of the various treatise on the zone system... nothing wrong with these; but to use the zone system and expose most of your outdoor shooting correctly these little rules are all you need.

 

[Bill Burk]

Speaking of Pentax spotmeters, I have the older analog version. Lovely, but...the tiny lamp which illuminates the needle has apparently burned out. Without that light reading in the shadows is ... difficult, to say the least! Any suggestions on a repair shop?

Funny I didn’t think it ever burned out. Are you checking in the dark? It only lights a few numbers like 1-4 because it assumes if the reading is more than 5 then you have enough light to see the scale

 

[RalphLambrecht]

An old thread I know but is the digital spot meter scale still available for download ?

Simply send me an email to rlambrec@ymail.com andI'll send you hat you need or download the attached!

 

[Timothy Hyde]

Ralph- The link to your website redirects me to some landing page for an asian soccer enterprise.
Tim