Sekonic L398M question

[Navy Moose]

Hello All,

I am new to the Living Large life and I'm trying to learn everything I can to become successful with LF.

I have owned a Sekonic L398M analog light meter for quite a while and I have the usual array of disks for it. I want to learn Zone System and use it for my black and white work. From my readings, people use spot meters for their ZS readings. I saw a spot meter attachment for my meter at B&H and I'm thinking of purchasing it.

Is this attachment truly useful for this particular meter? If not, will the spot meter mode on my Nikon D200 be sufficient for the readings?

Thank you!

Navy Moose

[jotloob]

Navy

I use the L398A for general metering .
For the ZS i use the MINOLTA spotmeter and I could not think of a better meter for that purpose . Never experienced any problems and the exposures were as expected .
IMHO , a real spotmeter is the best you can have for the ZS metering .

[Dan Ingram]

My experience with my L398 is that it makes an excellent incident meter, and is mediocre in its other capacities. I have used it several times as a reflective meter, and always found the readings suspect. When I measured them against my trusty Gossen (and later against my new SLR) I found the reflective measurements accurate under certain conditions (lots of light) and inaccurate under others (not so much light). The meter's reputation is mainly based on its dependability and trustworthiness (and indestructability) as an incident meter. I've never used the spot attachment, but I wouldn't think it would give good reflective readings. I would like to disabused of that notion, because of all the gear I own I LOVE my L398M more than most -- it was my first incident meter, and as such it changed the way I shoot almost everything (especially motion picture film.) And it's a beautiful piece of gear to boot. But for LF, I wouldn't be caught dead without my Spotmeter F, or another dedicated spot meter. Just hang the 398 around your neck whether you're using it or not -- it's guaranteed to make you look like you know what you're doing!

Dan

[Navy Moose]

Thank you both! I picked up a Pentax Spot V yesterday, I read a number of reviews on this meter and they were all positive. My L398 will still be with me for incident readings.