Re: [Leica] Leica R8 vs Nikon F5 light metering

[Jim Brick <jim@brick.org>]

You are correct. When I went through Brooks, it was 90% incident and 10%
reflected meter work. The only reason for using a reflected meter (removing
the dome from the Sekonic and replacing it with the grid) was to determine
scene brightness for B&W work (black towel and white soap, inside a church
with bright windows and very dark woodwork...) You then know how to develop
the neg. Compress, expand, whatever... (sheet film). At that time, there
was no such thing as a TTL meter. There was Sekonic Studio and Weston
Master. Both could read incident and reflected. It was much easier with the
Sekonic so that was the meter of choice. I still have mine and I still use it.

Jim

At 03:21 AM 4/9/98 -0400, you wrote:
>If an incident light meter is accurate enough to secure close to 100%
>correct exposure for short latitude film such as Kodachome that must have
>dead on exposure, why wouldn't the incident light meter be accurate enough
>for black & white film that has much greater latitude?  Mike Tatum of
>Plymouth Products fame, advised me to use a Sekonic incident meter in 1968,
>and I found it to provide much more accuracy than trying to measure
>everything in the scene using a reflectance meter and then averaging. 
>(Mike used the Leica system.)
>
>I still like to use the old Sekonic and check the R-8 reading.    
>