Zone VI modified Pentax Digital Spotmeter confusion

[DREW WILEY]

I still use Fred's compensating development timer and cold light beeper (essentially a light integrator). But I was very disappointed in his tripod, which was just a thread-modified cheap survey tripod with a worthless ordinary plywood top which delaminated in the weather. I ended up giving it to a co-worker for his amateur astro tele hobby. I sold survey tripods which were way better, and certainly lower in price, though my personal use tripods are Ries. His showman barker marketing persona was unnecessary; he had enough good products to keep up his sales momentum without the exaggeration. And yes, he was a different kind of person over the phone.

His most ridiculed bellyflop were his sets of "fine reference prints" made by assistants, which were apparently anything but fine. And his triumph was the superb Brilliant Bromide paper.

At one time, the Pentax and Minolta spotmeters cost about the same when new. If there is a discrepancy today on the used market, it probably due to the influence of the Zone System and all its Pentax devotees.

 

[Chan Tran]

At one time, the Pentax and Minolta spotmeters cost about the same when new. If there is a discrepancy today on the used market, it probably due to the influence of the Zone System and all its Pentax devotees.

Actually when I bought the Minolta Spotmeter M it was more expensive than the Pentax Digital Spotmeter. At the time being young I liked the 1/10 resolution.

 

[chuckroast]

Actually when I bought the Minolta Spotmeter M it was more expensive than the Pentax Digital Spotmeter. At the time being young I liked the 1/10 resolution.

It's funny you mention this. I have tested dozens and dozens of shutters, new and old, and they exhibit far more variability than any of the "inaccurate" meters might induce. Even brand new shutters can be off a surprising amount, particularly larger leaf shutters at the higher speeds.

I would note that I use a simple light path/time measurement scheme which does not fully take into account the open time at the edge of the opening vs. the center, so my measurements are somewhat pessimistic, but still, it's not uncommon to see older leaf shutter off by a full stop.

So all the care we take in making our meters read right kind of goes out the window with the reality of how real world shutters work (unless you like carrying around a table of corrections for every shutter speed on every shutter - I do not).

This is why I cling to the idea that repeatability, not absolute accuracy, is that is important for the individual practitioner.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I test all my shutters. Other than the very highest speed of 1/500th, the worst any of my Copal shutters is off is a third stop. More often the deviance of any speed setting is well within 1/6th. I don't worry too much about wide open circumstances, since most of my shooting is done well stopped down. I typically test at f/22. But I do realize that with older Acme and Compound shutters, there can be greater variation.

I cut my teeth on color chrome shooting, along with printing on Cibachrome - a very unforgiving combination in terms of exposure error.

 

[Chan Tran]

Ice Racer tested his Nikon N55 and found the shutter speed to be spot on but regardless 2 wrongs don't make a right. I actually prefer a meter that accurately wrong than one that is inaccurately right. You might have good exposure with all of the measurements wrong. I rather have poor exposure but the measurement is accurate because when I have accurate measurement and I have bad result it's my fault.

 

[John Wiegerink]

I think it's all about consistent. I have a very good repair man in my area that was from Europe. I brought a Hasselblad lens to him that I wanted checked out because I planned on keeping it instead of reselling (that was my business at that time). When I went to pick it up he had the test graph from the complete shutter speed range. Two of the speeds were off by 1/2 stop. I ask him how much it wood cost to have him take it down and fix the two speeds that were off. He looked at me, smiled, then said, "You shoot weddings and neither of these speeds will have anything to do with your wedding shooting". He also said that all speeds were tested five times each and those two speeds that were off were 100% consistent and that was the most important thing, "being consistent". He did say that he would be very happy to take my money and then winked. I shot many weddings and other things with that lens and it never let me down. I still use it to this day, but I also know those two "off" shutter speeds and try to avoid them or compensate for their error. I'd do the same for a light meter if it was off "consistently".

 

[chuckroast]

Ice Racer tested his Nikon N55 and found the shutter speed to be spot on but regardless 2 wrongs don't make a right. I actually prefer a meter that accurately wrong than one that is inaccurately right. You might have good exposure with all of the measurements wrong. I rather have poor exposure but the measurement is accurate because when I have accurate measurement and I have bad result it's my fault.

I think the newer SLR shutters tend to be better. Even the old vertical shutter on the Nikkormat is surprisingly good lo these many years later. The F3 is pretty much flawless.

 

[chuckroast]

I test all my shutters. Other than the very highest speed of 1/500th, the worst any of my Copal shutters is off is a third stop. More often the deviance of any speed setting is well within 1/6th. I don't worry too much about wide open circumstances, since most of my shooting is done well stopped down. I typically test at f/22. But I do realize that with older Acme and Compound shutters, there can be greater variation.

I cut my teeth on color chrome shooting, along with printing on Cibachrome - a very unforgiving combination in terms of exposure error.

I have an old 8 1/2" Kodak Commerical Ektar in an Acme/Ilex that would NOT work properly at 1/50 and was well over a stop off. I sent it off to one tech for repair and he returned it having invested many hours trying to get it to run properly, and didn't charge me because he could not get it corrected. This was a very experienced and capable tech who had done a lot of stuff for me over the years. Eventually I sent it off to Dave Easterwood in Michigan who (eventually) got it back to me in perfect working order. Go figure.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Robert Pirsig had a POV on that

Having worked with many QA processes over the years, "quality" in practice ends up mostly being seen as "conformance to specifications" not some sort of absolute standard of goodness.

well said

 

[jeffreyg]

Plus 1 well said Doug. I ll add that the subject and composition are what attract most viewers to an image.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Digging up the old Butzi article further complicates the mystery. But it does incidentally stumble over at least one more bogus presumption Picker made about meter function, when he tried to create a meter which could read through deep tricolor filters correctly, rather than applying tested filter factors after an unfiltered reading. I won't go into the details of that rabbit hole; but Picker was quite naive about it, and only made it worse by assuming all pan films were going to behave like his beloved Tri-X. Anyone who has learned to make precisely balanced tricolor film separations understands that it is not anywhere near that simple of a problem.

The timing of that article seems to have been back when Zone VI was sold to Calumet, who soon afterwards dropped the ball - dropped a lot of things in fact, which is why they soon went out of business themselves. And of course, with change of ownership, there went all the warranty backing of Z VI products. Their redux version of Brilliant paper was particularly disappointing.

One thing about testimonials and reviews in magazines and now websites that the public rarely recognizes is the distinct incentive to skew the results on the positive side, otherwise these reviewers wouldn't get loaned the gadgets in the first place or keep receiving other positive perks and incentives themselves. I know the mantra from the inside, because I got paid more than double since I was one of the very few persons who took the time and fuss to do objective reviews, good or bad, right down to dissecting the equipment in order to confirm or deny any marketing BS. I also had the advantage of an adjunct service department with its all of its experience. And I was working for more pro oriented publications than news stand rags like Pop Photo and Consumer Reports. That was a long time ago. But nothing has really changed. Unless you know otherwise, take reviews with a grain of salt.

The most important thing, however, is that one just get deeply familiar with their own preferred meter through practice involving their own kind of subject matter. Expose, print; print, expose.

 

[BrianShaw]

I read the Alan Ross quote a bit different. He seemed to be describing his testing and not necessarily implying that his choice of filters conforms to Picker/Horowitz meter modification design philosophy or spec.

The major complication of Butzi’s tome is the complete dependence on opinion and no revelation of his actual testing, other than conclusion statements. One self-promoter railing against another self-promoter is one possible interpretation. It’s no surprise to me that he abandon the article and didn’t support any legacy access to it.

I’m sure he’s a decent person but that’s just not very convincing if one is analytical and critical thinking.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Yep. It's pretty much up to actual users of both styles of meters to render their own real-world verdicts, because everything allegedly objective so far on this thread is highly doubtful in terms of methodology. It might be fun to own both types and see for oneself. I couldn't justify the extra expense just due to curiosity, especially since I already get exactly what I need from my unmodified meters.

I have listened to the opinions of career types of the most intense variety - Hollywood filmmakers - where at least in former decades both types of meter were in parallel usage. But again, opinions were given with respect to personal whims rather than any paperwork proof. I guess they too just get used to working with certain meters and end up intuitively factoring the idiosyncrasies.

But this point in time, relying on unmodified meters would seem more logical because, at a certain point, it's simply going to be next to impossible to still maintain the modified ones. We should thank Fred Picker and his patent medicine wagon for bringing a little more spice to our equipment conversations.

 

[Richard T Ritter]

One thing that was found in testing meters was that all makes of meters had the same problem. The problem was all meter had the same problem reading some colors correctly and the Pentax meter because of the way it was made was able to be modified. The newsletter on the meter had one missing piece of information that meters all makes needed a color correction filter along with the others that were used to give a better reading of all colors. The real reason for adding the filter was never told to Fred.

As to the camera all parts were made out of house by other . The only thing Zone VI and then Calumet did was to put then together.

 

[BrianShaw]

“The real reason for adding the filter was never told to Fred.”

Why not?

 

[Neil Poulsen]

Fred Pickers

An advantage of the Pentax spotmeter over the Soligor is the multicoated front optic, making it somewhat less prone to flare issues. Regardless, I always shade it facing the sun, or in relation to any large intense sunlight reflections in water.

Brian - the alleged "exposure errors" for the unmodified meter per Picker's chart aren't just suspect, they're ludicrous!

Decades ago, I originally purchased the Soligor 1 Deg. spot meter new and discovered that the sensitive area of the meter didn't line up with the 1 deg. spot one sees in the viewfinder.

So, I spent the extra and returned is for a Pentax V non-digital meter. I've seen this misalignment on other Soligor meters as well.

 

[outwest]

FWIW, at one time in the past I somehow ended up with 5 Pentax meters (of various vintages as far back as the look down) and 2 Soligors. Curious I did a test and found that all the Pentaxes agreed and that the Soligors neither agreed with the Pentaxes or with each other.

 

[Sirius Glass]

FWIW, at one time in the past I somehow ended up with 5 Pentax meters (of various vintages as far back as the look down) and 2 Soligors. Curious I did a test and found that all the Pentaxes agreed and that the Soligors neither agreed with the Pentaxes or with each other.

Send them all off to a testing facility and have all of them calibrated to standard source and then that will not be a problem.

 

[Richard T Ritter]

Because he was not a color photographer and would of thrown a fit if he knew the true reason for it. But it helps out a lot with B & W film too.

Paul said the best baffle for a meter was a toilet paper tube.

 

[BrianShaw]

Because he was not a color photographer and would of thrown a fit if he knew the true reason for it. But it helps out a lot with B & W film too.

Paul said the best baffle for a meter was a toilet paper tube.

Interesting; Thanks for the explanation. Certainly not what I thought I would learn!

My household produces those kind of Pentax Digital Spot Meter lens shades on a regular basis. I should label them with a logo and sell them at premium prices.

 

[Kino]

Interesting; Thanks for the explanation. Certainly not what I thought I would learn!

My household produces those kind of Pentax Digital Spot Meter lens shades on a regular basis. I should label them with a logo and sell them at premium prices.

Just be sure to flock the interior with black paint and paint the exterior with some orange safety paint. People are twitchy enough about the pistol shape of the meter as it is; show up with a giant tube sticking out and misunderstandings can occur...

 

[Chuck1]

Or just leave the tp on the roll, you never know when it could come in handy...

 

[BrianShaw]

Or just leave the tp on the roll, you never know when it could come in handy...

That will be the deluxe model! You, me, and Kino should become partners in this potentially prosperous venture. Perhaps we can expand to other makes and models of spot meters to have a comprehensive product line. Shark Tank?

 

[Kino]

That will be the deluxe model! You, me, and Kino should become partners in this potentially prosperous venture. Perhaps we can expand to other makes and models of spot meters to have a comprehensive product line. Shark Tank?

I can think of some very inappropriate names for this product...

 

[DREW WILEY]

Sell them at REI, which can fetch $55 for a designer logo pee bottle.

And remember, the outside of a toilet paper roll corresponds to Zone VIII, the inside to Zone II.