Interesting, Steve. Are you a dental assistant? That's the only kind of calculus I can understand. My wife is a serious math whiz, and I once had an ex-CalTech roommate who could do seven digit logarithms in his head (but couldn't spell "was" or "that"). But counting fingers generally works better for me. At my ole workplace one of the outdoor laborers was an Arkie who lost several fingers from home-made table saws back in his youth cutting cordwood. He was a wonderful sport, so we made all kinds of practical jokes about it. For a retirement present, I painted a big color cartoon with him as the President in the oval office, all frustrated attempting to hit the red button with a cut off finger. His wife framed it for their kitchen. Sadly, that hard former life in the South prematurely aged him, and he passed away of apparent old age at just 52, which he considered to be a long life by his standards. But guess this constitutes another bad joke, so don't know how it will be taken. But that ole gentleman loved the jokes about his minor disability. It was kinda a badge of his pride in a rough and tumble background, trying to make a living. Maybe not the kind of thing the average city dweller would appreciate; but whenever we asked him to double check his math counting fingers, he put on a huge smile and burst out laughing.
"Landscapes exist in the material world yet soar in the realms of the spirit..." Tsung Ping, 5th Century China
I recently handled a meter with the sticker, and after using my unmodded Pentax spotmeters for years, it was confusing. I am happy with the meter as-is but I have thought about taping a step wedge on the handle.
One of the other things that's interesting about the Gossen Spot-Master is that after metering the dynamic range between the highest and lowest zones, you can push a button to average your readings for a scene, and then move the average value to Zone V, and the LED will display a suggested N+/- development time if warranted. Of course, any actual adjustment depends on the film and developer used and the photographer's visualization of what he or she wants, so the meter manual just refers to this as a "hint". I typically use it as a reference point or starting place, but rely more on my own judgment.
One down side to the meter that I discovered after reading about MPD methods where you might want to meter for the highlights (Z VII) instead of the shadows (Z III) is that you can only move the initial Z V reading of the Spot-Master down the scale, not upward. I thought that was an unfortunate design flaw, but adjusting it upward probably wasn't anticipated by the designers since the original Zone technique advocated for dialing down to the shadows. MPD techniques sort of turned it on its head to meter for the highlights.
I dream in black and white.
Burger meat comes from tofu. I'm not sure what breed of cattle that is. The office lady in charge of food at our big business BBQ's demanded that 40% of all the meat be tofu burgers. At the end of each such event, exactly 40% of the burgers were left over, uneaten.
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