anand@utastro.UUCP (06/27/84)
I use a Pentax V spotmeter ($130-170 or thereabouts) for most low-light work, it meters down to extremely low light values where reciprocity failure effects are dominant, so effectively it meters down to the proverbial black cat in a coal cellar at midnight. There are spots that meter lower, but at that stage (meter says give it 8 sec at f/32... do you give it 20 or 50 or 100 sec? It's up to you and depends on how you develop.....) it's seat of the pants. The meter is a little bulky after the Weston Master II that I generally use for daylight metering (Zone buffs love the scale on the W-M's, the U, O and C marks), and it takes a little more time to 'visualize' (to borrow a phrase from the master) using the Pentax scale, but I've found it extremely reliable. A real spot meter is generally more useful (in the Zone System context) than a 'zoom' meter with a 'narrow angle'(10 or 15 degrees?) field. If one is going to spend the time setting up a view camera and then going to the trouble of developing one neg. first, scratching one's head a little, developing the second, etc., the spot meter really is a must to separate out the illumination levels in the field of view. And it's a lot easier carrying around a spot meter than a Canon F-1 with a 135mm lens on it to use just as a quasi-spotmeter!