Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/09/05

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Whether to buy a seperate meter?
From: csocolow <csocolow@microserve.net>
Date: Sun, 05 Sep 1999 22:32:16 -0400

Mark Rabiner wrote:

> I have a "hi light" button on my Minolta spot meter. It seems to give you 2.3
> stops. It is useless to me because why should a hi light be 2.3 stops? If such a
> thing were configurable it would have some use. For me as we were saying a day
> or two ago the significant highlight for black and white would be 3 over. If I
> could configure a meter for that I could hit that hi light button like crazy and
> it would make for a faster operation for me. A hi light button one stop over for
> slides would be great I would take reading off the low sky hit the highlight
> button and run with it.
> If I could configure a shadow button for 2 under I would get great use out of
> that too. -2.7 on my Minolta meter is meaningless for me and I would have to
> write it on the meter to remember what their parameters are. Where did they get
> 2.7 or 2.3  from? What would Olympus consider a highlight? Who the heck knows
> and what would the odds be that that would have some meaning to a particular
> photographers way of working that day?
> Mark Rabiner

Interestingly enough, Mark, the Minolta Flashmeter IV has the ability to
place or change the pre-programmed highlight and shadow values from
their defaults. As you noted with the Spotmeter F, the exposure is
increased 2.3 stops when highlight button is pressed and reduced 2.7
when shadow button is pressed. With the Flashmeter IV you can adjust
these values to suit your working style or film stock. I'm not sure if
the newer Flashmeter V allows you to enter various film stocks. I
believe you can enter various Polaroid speeds and then extrapolate the
exposure via the meter for the actual speed of the working emulsion. I
just wish I could adjust the values of highlight and shadow on the
Spotmeter F. Hope this clears some confusion.
- -- 
Carl Socolow

http://members.tripod.com/SocPhoto/