Your advice on the best spot meter for LF color & b/w photography?

**ROL** · 21-Jan-2012, 10:20

Originally Posted by falth j

I'm not as experienced as the rest of the joiners on this forum...

but I've owned perhaps 50-10 meters since 1955, and I have to admit, even one of the earlierst meters is still working excellently in its designed reflective mode.

Over the years, I own others, but kept looking for the 'perfect' meter.

Like the 'perfect' car, bike, or wife, there has to be a lot of trade-offs...

I bought the sekonic you mention, and with some practice find it's better than most, and even the meters with the read-out in the display... as they say your MMV.

Have you looked over the material here:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...s/meters.shtml

"joiner"?!? Golly sakes alive, me thinks I've been insulted ...again.

Keep in mind that a spot meter, (not so) arguably the best tool for zone work, may also be used as an incident meter by pointing it at a grey card, the back of your (lily white) hand, etc., when needed. The reverse utility is hard to come by with an incident only meter. I actually cut down an old plastic–y Kodak grey card to fit the lens standard of my camera, replacing the mounted lens boards when packed up. That way I always have an official reflective grey surface with me (obviating the use of my normally seriously tanned hands), while simultaneously sealing the lens end of the bellows, when the camera is packed up.

**Frank Petronio** · 21-Jan-2012, 10:26

Another vote for the Pentax Digital, it is worth it, I just bought a back-up!

**Larry Gebhardt** · 21-Jan-2012, 15:45

Originally Posted by l2oBiN

I would like to invest in a light meter. Something which will hopefully reliably serve me for years to come. I will be using it for transparencies and b/w. I have used the sekonic L508 and i dont find it intuitive. There is no in viewfinder display and it does not meter even in dim light. I woul prefer a meter that displays EV readings in the viewfinder and can be used continuously while the meter button is down. That way I could quickly determine the range in a swoop. I would also like it to be good in low light. It should be rugged, reliable and easy to find batteries. It would be great if it had both spot and incident, but spot is more important feature.

What are your suggestions?

From what you have stated you want a Pentax Digital Spot. It does everything you want, except the incident metering. For incident and flash I have a Sekonic 308 and it's not too bad. But I like the Pentax interface much more than the Sekonic.

**rdenney** · 21-Jan-2012, 22:33

Originally Posted by John NYC

I don't the the OP is going to want another Sekonic after he said he doesn't like his current one.

Not so. Sekonic is an old company and they have made all kinds of meters.

The L-488 is a 1-degree spot meter that provides an EV display in the viewfinder that will change as you sweep the spot around the scene with your finger on the trigger. You do have to press the F/EV button when you turn it on to put it in EV-reading mode. It uses a physical scale to convert EV readings to exposure values, making it easy and quick to use with the Zone System. It is accurate and inexpensive on the used market. It uses standard AA cells and will also meter flash. It reads down to EV 1 (ISO 100).

The only one of the OP's requirements it does not fulfill is the optional requirement to provide incident metering. It does providing an averaging mode that will read across what is visible in the viewfinder, though.

The L-488 is inexpensive on the used market--much less expensive than the Pentax digital or the Minolta Spot F, and often cheaper than the Pentax Spotmeter V. Both the Pentax meters also fulfill the OP's requirements, but the Minolta does not (it's too fiddly with the LCD readout).

It would be cheaper to get a good spot meter and a separate good incident meter, than to buy one of the recent super meters with both incident and 1-degree spot capability. I shudder to think of what I paid for a new Sekonic L-718 a dozen years ago because I thought it could be a do-all meter. I never use it for anything but incident, and usually just with studio flash, which I use so rarely than I have to spend 15 minutes finding it. And then I can never remember where I put the spot attachment or all the little attachments that switch it from incident to reflected.

Rick "who has owned a lot of meters, and now uses the L-488 and an old Spot V" Denney