Newbie Nikon RF user needs advice

[ch1]

Hi all,

After reading this site for months and cogitating and cogitating I finally bit the bullet and paid more $ than I can believe to buy a Nikon S2 with a couple of lenses etc. on the Bay.

Now I realize that as a SLR-user, even if going back to the old manual days of my Nikkormat FT2 some thirty years ago, I've always had TTL metering to rely upon.

I'll have a lot of questions for you folks as I get into this new (for me) aspect of photography, but for now, can I hear some ideas of what kind of a light meter to get?

I'm not "religious" about it being "period" to the S2 - in fact, I'd just as soon it be as modern as can be w/o breaking the bank. For measuring light to exposure/aperture needs - digital works just fine for me if that's the best way to go. Heck, I am going to have an interesting enough time figuring out how to load film in this camera!

Please give me your thoughts. And I warn you - this is just the first question I'm going to have! 😉

Regards,
George

 

[wlewisiii]

VC Meter II at Cameraquest.com. It's small, accurate, easy to use and, best of all, you can simply put it into the accessory shoe and go.

A bit expensive, but I really like mine.

William

 

[f/stopblues]

Welcome! Congrats on joining the ranks. There will soon be an onslaught of information coming your way, so brace yourself! I'll let the big boys handle your metering questions though, as I'm a child of the TTL super-sophisticated matrix metering myself.

They will want to know what kind of film you shoot though!

Enjoy!

Chris

 

[furcafe]

I like the Gossen Digisix. It's very small & extremely accurate & takes both reflected & incident readings. I'm sure Sekonic has an equivalent that's great, too.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Welcome to the Nikon Forum and congratulations on the S2. I use a Weston Master II with my Nikon RF's and a Weston Master 715 with the Leica's. I shoot color print film for the most part, and C41 B&W. Maybe with a little more time this summer, I'll break out the Paterson tank for Tri-X.

Bearing in mind that the Weston is an averaging meter, I usually come in close to meter the points of interest and set accordingly. I can usually hit within 1/2 stop of what the F2AS will give me.

What lenses did you pick up?

Nikon SP w Nikkor 85mm F2 lens, ~F4 and Fast Shutter. Weston Master II. This was a $5 meter.

 

[VinceC]

I'd recommend any incident meter. Usually these have a small white dome and you use them to measure the light source. For the most part, in-camera TTL meters have spent the last 40 years using matrixes and center-weighting and what-not to try to replicate the simple accuracy of an incident meter.

Congrats on the new camera.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Vince, have you used a Nikon F Photomic? I always ended up using the incident attachment for the Bulls-Eye meter at Air Shows.

The Weston Meters have the "Invercone" attachment for using it in Incident mode.

 

[KoNickon]

I have a couple of Gossen Luna Pros (actually one is a Luna Six; the European version, I think?). You can't go wrong with those, and they have the incident cone built in if you want to use it. You ought to be able to get one of these for a little more than half what you'd pay for the Voigtlander meter.

 

[VinceC]

>>Vince, have you used a Nikon F Photomic?<<

Nope. They certainly caught my eye back when I spent more time at camera shows. One F came with an eyelevel finder (no meter) and the other came with a Fotomic FTn, which is still pretty darned accurate, but I hardly ever shoot SLRs (I'm getting tempted to use an SLR now that soccer season has restarted, but everytime I go to load film into an F or F2 it ends up in the SP or S3 instead).

For many years I used several small pocket-sized meters I'd gotten very cheap used. Because I kept them in my pocket, they tended not to last.

I did just realize that my Gossen LunaPro in fact still works. It's kind of big, so I hardly ever use it. Plus it's affected by the hard-to-find mercury battery problem. One of the reasons I really like RF cameras is their small size, so a handheld light meter that's half the size of the camera kind of blows apart the idea of staying small. I've considered getting one of the tiny meters currently on the market. But I haven't succumbed. I only shoot negative film these days and it has enough latitude to cover the Sunny 16/indoors 60@2 rule (400 speed). The LunaPro is a wonderful meter. When I used it more often, I just kept it tucked into a pocket of my camera bag.

By the way, a very nice thing about an incident meter is that, if the light isn't changing, you meter for a situation one time and then stop worrying about it and concentrate on catching the moment and composition. If you're at a situation like an air show, and there are broken clouds, you might have to keep two readings in your head, one in open sunlight (surely something close to sunny 16) and one for when the sun is behind a cloud.

When I first bought my S2, I used it almost exclusively with a handheld meter and to shoot Kodachromes. That's how I fell in love with the whole Nikon RF system.

 

[peter_n]

Welcome to the forum George! 🙂 I have read very good things about the Sekonic L-308S Flashmate, which is a new model reflected, incident and flash meter all rolled into one little package that uses a single AA battery. $179 at B&H and in stock (see the second link below).

I think ManGo has one.

Sekonic L-308S FlashMate product page
B&H - Sekonic L-308S Flashmate

 

[Doug]

Handheld incident meters are a great way to go. I loop the lanyard around my belt and carry it in a jacket or pants pocket. The Luna Pro is a bit bulky for this, but I had mine callibrated so that it can act as an accuracy check for my other meters. BTW, mine is the Luna Pro F that uses a 9v "transistor" battery, not the mercury cells. And I like these "null reading" models better than the traditional Luna Pro readout.

So does my Luna Star F, a digital reading meter that is much slimmer than the Luna Pro, so it's often the one I carry. I'm also still fond of my old Super Pilot SBC too, which is null-reading, and looks like a half-size Luna Pro. Very easy to slip into a shirt pocket.

 

[ch1]

Wow all,

Thanks and keep the advice coming - err...for a while yet.

My first inclination is to go with the acc-shoe mounted LC but now I'm not so sure - especially since I am going to have a 50 and 135 (and soon, I hope 35) for which the viewfinder will need the shoe.

So next query is - if I go with an unmounted ambient (at least) LM - I assume I hold it at apprximately the same level as the lens. Is this correct.

Boy, do I feel stupid or what....!

 

[Sonnar Brian]

The nice thing about a handheld meter is that you can get in close, meter the specific features that you want, and set the exposure accordingly. Just point them into the general direction of the scene, and usually point down so that they are not biased by the sky. Most hand-helds are averaging meters. The sky will throw the meter and cause most of the scene to be underexposed. If you use an incident light meter, for get all that. You aim it at the light source, usually the Sun when outdoors.

 

[VinceC]

In general, when using a reflected light meter, you hold it where the camera is and point it toward the scene you're photographic.

With an incident meter, you ideally hold it where the subject is and point it toward the camera.

Another method is to use an 18 percent gray card. These used to come with photo exposure guides back in the 1960s and 70s. It's a good way to learn a bit about metering. Just place the 18 percent gray card near the subject, with the light falling on the card the same as the subject, and meter off the card. Outdoors in the summer, green grass is very darned close, so you can meter off that.

Close to 20 years ago the Army sent me to a summer-long graduate photojournalism course at the University of South Carolina, back when manual cameras were still the norm, and the instructor insisted we meter all our shots off an 18 percent gray card. I tried that for awhile then switch to incident light metering because it was generally quicker.