Hand-held Meters?

Over the years I've 'collected' a few Weston Master Vs, plus some more modern meters. The Westons always seemed dependable until I compared them against a brand new Sekonic and then I panicked a little. One 'newish' Weston would not adjust to the range of two others - the others did not agree with the Sekonic - the Sekonic didn't agree with a Lunasix 3S which had just been serviced by Gossen. Arghh!

But, after recording many readings with each meter and plotting them as a graph the truth dawned. Each meter had different characteristics, sensitivities and spectral responses - and the perceived differences were insignificant. Once I had noted these individual idiosyncracies, and labelled each meter with its 'tolerances', I felt quite reassured that they were all quite reliable, and (more importantly) that I really, fundamentally knew that meters are only a guide and that I really should trust my 40 years of experience more.

The moral? It ain't what you've got (or buy) that really matters, it's knowing how to use it ... My excuse for forgetting this was that I was seduced by a new piece of 'precision' gear .... I should've known better.

D'oh!
 
I have an old Gossen LunaPro SBC that I use in low light situations where my M6 TTL's meter does not work. The M6 TTL's meter also stops working after a while in freezing cold weather. In my experience, the Gossen is more accurate, and also can be used in incident mode. But for the vast majority of situations, the M6 TTL's meter works well with B&W and color slide film.
 
Drambuie said:
The moral? It ain't what you've got (or buy) that really matters, it's knowing how to use it ... My excuse for forgetting this was that I was seduced by a new piece of 'precision' gear .... I should've known better.
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Absolutely. Yesterday I was talking to Dr. Nasse at Zeiss about compensating for the gear you own and use; the day before, to Keith Canham (Canham Cameras) about the same thing.

ANYTHING will work if you're used to it (Keith tells the story of his first elderly exposure meter, where he rated Plus-X at 6 to get consistently good results) but too many people spend too much time with ever-changing meters, lenses, shutters, films, developers...

Standardize as far as possible. Then take pictures. As someone else (or possibly I) said in an earlier post: it ain't rocket science.

Cheers,

R.
 
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