Spotmeter Pentax vs Sekonic 758D

Hi everyone.

I'm looking about a light meter a spot (1 grd),

Important facts for me are:

 

1.Size (landscape use)

2.Possibility to calculate filters factor.

3.Ability to take readings for long exposures (i.e. 20').

 

I show that most profs makes choise of pentax spotmeter vs sekonic 758.

Which is your opinion?

I have owned both. the Pentax digital spot meter was extremely simple to use, very light and small yet rugged (more rugged than the sekonic in my opinion), and very accurate. That said, the sekonic has many more functions and might prove more useful depending on your style of shooting. do you already own a good incident meter? I like to keep separate meters for separate purposes. However, if you dont have an incident meter and think you might use one in the future, you might like the sekonic.

 

I would chose the Pentax. but thats me. What kinda camera are you shooting anyway.. normally, unless you have large format and are really getting into zoning, your not really going to need a spot meter. Spot meters are very helpful when you are able to custom develop individual shots for contrast and density. If your using roll film, I have found the benefit of the spot negligible at best. Bracketing often is more effective and cheaper. If your camera has average metering, buy a nice telephoto instead, and that will serve 2 purposes, a nice new lens and a way to spot meter for shorter focal length lenses.

I just looked at your profile. Nice pictures. It looks like you shot mostly large format landscape. Youll probably like the pentax alot better, unless your a techy kind of guy who appreciates buttons instead of mechanical dials. My preference is the dial. its faster and easy. you can look at the dial and see overexposure and underexposure without having to press anything, just by looking at the numbers before and after the center marking. easy. quick. the sekonic requires the push of a button for the same function. thats more time looking down at the meter and not paying attention to the details of your shot. Zone 5 even makes a strip which you can place near the dial and it will give you gray scale and zoning information. Very useful.

I have a Pentax and it is one piece of equipment I'll never sell.

 

Spot metering is great for digital too. Measure the brightest spot (literally) in your composition, expose it at +2 and you've got instant, never fail, expose to the right. With some recent cameras, +2 2/3 is correct. Adjust to your own with a few tests.

 

For what I can see, the Sekonic can measure higher levels of light, which can maybe be useful in some situations with digital. However, I have never felt the Pentax gave me a wrong measurement.

 

I also have a Sekonic incident meter for other situations and I love it too.

Thank you Stephane and Ryan.

About your question Ryan, i have allready a Gossen incident light meter and i shoot large format (4x5) plus panoramic roll films (6x17).

I often use centre spot filter with both formats plus other filters and whith my Gossen light meter, is easy to calculate these filters factors, before taking a reading, without making calculations in my mind after reading.

I don't know if Sekonic has this ability or not, but this is important to me.

I think that with Pentax i have to put a different iso setting, too many stops as the filters factor is, to take a right exposure reading. Is that correct?

Sometimes, when the light changes very soon, every second is too important for me, and if i have allready passed in my light meter before, the filters factor, just a reading is enough to shoot without making calculations in my mind under time pressure, which means wrongs exposures sometimes.

The Pentax only offers a sensitivity of 1EV / 100ISO, so metering 20 minute exposures is going to be a bit of a problem with it. At current new prices, the Pentax meter is also grossly overpriced, especially when you look at the extra features and functions offered by the Sekonic 758.

 

The size and weight are both similar, so why not go for the Sekonic at nearly half the price and 3 stops more sensitivity?

Christos,

 

I've owned the Pentax V spotmeter for years. It's a great meter...extremely rugged and reliable, very simple to use and quite

accurate. The newer digital Pentax spotmeter is even better...smaller, lighter and probably more reliable.

 

I don't have experience with the Sekonic model mentioned, but I have a (discontinued?) digital Minolta Spotmeter

F and an older Minolta incident/flash meter. The Minolta meters are great, but are more complicated to use than the Pentax. For LF work in

the field, which nearly always involves

spotmetering, I alway use the Pentax. I really appreciate the utter simplicity of the Pentax; there are so many things to remember, and so

many ways to screw things up

when shooting LF in the field, that using such a basic meter makes things a lot less complicated.

 

Filter factors can be dealt with in various ways. Many times, when using any spotmeter, I meter the scene by holding the

filter directly in front of the meter's lens, take my readings then put the filter on the taking lens. It's a bit slower, but I find it's more accurate

and less error-prone than applying filter factors and making mental calculations. The Pentax V (I'm not certain about the digital pentax)

has filter threads on

the meter's lens hood (46mm thread size, if I remember correctly), so I often just screw on a similar filter on the Pentax as

the one I'm using on the camera's taking lens, which makes things very easy. As noted, you can also apply filter factors by adjusting the

ASA scale, but that can lead

to exposure errors if you forget to re-adjust the scale when switching filters.

Thank you Joe and Sergio for your help.

I agree with Joe, that Pentax is grossly overpriced respect Sekonic spotmeter.

If it's a problem to take metering for long exposures with Pentax, there is a second big plus (first is price), for the Sekonic.

I never used the Pentax. The Sekonic works perfect for me.It gives me one opinion with the incident bulb, and

compared with spotmeterings this is good enough to expose Provia 100f without bracketing. Beeing both flash and

available light meter it does everything for me.I think there is a function for setting 2 different iso values.

Swopping between them should do it when swopping between naked lens and centerspotfiltered lens. There might be

is a smaller Sekonic that is worth looking at too.

Thank you Erlent.

I'll probably go for the Sekonic.