Sekonic vs Minolta IV F meter

Bimthecat said:

The most important feature for an flash meter is the "analyze"
feature.

Click to expand...

I disagree totally. The accepted practice for this is to take an incident reading for the background exposure, take a flash reading of the fill light, setting the fill to taste. You don't need an analyze function in the meter for that and in fact, I prefer to know what exposure I'm getting rather than relying on an analyze function.

If your meter is doing all that for you, I'd contend that it's alot like having the camera meter automatically do "it's thing" for you.

Jaz

There's nothing automatic about it, Jaz. If you want equal amounts of flash and fill you adjust the flash until the meter tells you it's 50/50, etc. The photographer still decides what ratio he wants.

Paul
http://www.paulsportraits.com

Jack A. Zucker said:

Bimthecat said:

The most important feature for an flash meter is the "analyze"
feature.

Click to expand...

I disagree totally. The accepted practice for this is to take an
incident reading for the background exposure, take a flash reading
of the fill light, setting the fill to taste. You don't need an
analyze function in the meter for that and in fact, I prefer to
know what exposure I'm getting rather than relying on an analyze
function.

If your meter is doing all that for you, I'd contend that it's alot
like having the camera meter automatically do "it's thing" for you.

Jaz

Click to expand...

Bimthecat said:

The most important feature for an flash meter is the "analyze"
feature.

This allows, with one reading, to determine:

1st: The correct exposure (obviously)
2nd: What is the contribution of the flash, AND what is the
contribution
of the ambient light. (to the total correct exposure)

Rememeber: Flash is F stop only, and ambient is BOTH Fstop and
shutter speed.
Photography is painting with light.
Adjusting these parameters is a required tool for top results.
Understanding, and utilizing, this "analyze" feature is a GIANT
advantage.
With studio strobes outdoors (catalog shoots/portraits) it is
fantastic.

The Minotla 4 F does not analyze, avoid it.
The Minolta 4 does analyze (no longer made, a great meter)
The Minolta 5 does analyze.
If a Seknoic model does not analyze, don't buy it.

Trust me, it's worth repeating.....
Understanding, and using, this "analyze" feature is a GIANT advantage.

Click to expand...

--
cheers,
morphez

Paul Ferrara said:

There's nothing automatic about it, Jaz. If you want equal amounts
of flash and fill you adjust the flash until the meter tells you
it's 50/50, etc. The photographer still decides what ratio he
wants.

Click to expand...

But said:

The most important feature for an flash meter is the "analyze"
feature.

Click to expand...

...And I disagree with that since you can easily duplicate that feature without the analysis function..

Bimthecat said:

Hello Rinus of Calgary,
You missed my point.
Having 2 meters, one for ambient and one for flash is
NOT the same.

Click to expand...

Huh?!? Unless your meter is really cheap or really old, almost every flashmeter measures ambient-incident light as well. What's with the 2 meters comment?

I didn't read the posts, but I doubt this has been covered. Sekonic has a strange way off breaking dowm a stop as you change ASA setting. If you changed your ASA a stop in 1/3 increments, you'd see Sekonic divides a stop into 3/10ths, then another 3/10ths & then 4/10ths. Strange, but not a reason to choose the Minolta.

We have both style meters & primarily use the Sekonics. We use the meters without the spotmeter the most. A dedicated Minolta spot meter can read light ,especially strobe, to a much lower level than the Sekonic all in one meter.

Both Sekonic & Minolta meters are more than good enough. The primary reason we bought the Sekonics was to use the radio slave.

padeye said:

We've had this discussion before. A historgram is useful and a
stopgap but not a substitute for a meter. The only reason I
haven't already gotten a Sekonic L358 is that I already have a
flash meter but it's still on my "to get" list.

Click to expand...

What? You've had to state this simple logic more than once?

A histogram is useful for making post-processing changes, but it says nearly nothing about a correct exposure, except maybe for the exposure of a gray card.

--
RDKirk

'I know you're smarter than I am. But I think you're making up some of those words.' Rocky Rooster from 'Chicken Run'

Rinus wrote:
In my 40 years of

Member said:

photography, I have never seen the need but I never saw the need
for auto focus either. A great invention too.
Rinus of Calgary

Click to expand...

Heh. I think it takes 30 or 40 years of photography to see the "need" for autofocus. Somewhere around the same time one runs into a need for bifocals.

--
RDKirk

'I know you're smarter than I am. But I think you're making up some of those words.' Rocky Rooster from 'Chicken Run'

morphez wrote:

Both are acceptably accurate. Consistency is more significant than accuracy. The "accuracy" argument is good for several different kinds of interminal discussions. One can start with "does it meter 18 percent gray or some other constant?" and then argue about whether a typical scene is really 18 percent gray (maybe 18 percent green?) after all.

But if the meter is merely consistent, you can calibrate your camera to it and go on about your work, not caring about nitnoy arguments.

--
RDKirk

'I know you're smarter than I am. But I think you're making up some of those words.' Rocky Rooster from 'Chicken Run'

Minolta IVF uses 1/10ths increment of a stop.

Here is a table that will help:

http://www.geocities.com/thombell/fstop.html

IMHO both are good meters. I use the Minolta and am happy with it. Make sure you get together with some other photographers and check the calibration. My meter was off by 6/10ths of a stop when new.

CLTHRS said:

I didn't read the posts, but I doubt this has been covered. Sekonic
has a strange way off breaking dowm a stop as you change ASA
setting. If you changed your ASA a stop in 1/3 increments, you'd
see Sekonic divides a stop into 3/10ths, then another 3/10ths &
then 4/10ths. Strange, but not a reason to choose the Minolta.

We have both style meters & primarily use the Sekonics. We use the
meters without the spotmeter the most. A dedicated Minolta spot
meter can read light ,especially strobe, to a much lower level than
the Sekonic all in one meter.

Both Sekonic & Minolta meters are more than good enough. The
primary reason we bought the Sekonics was to use the radio slave.

Click to expand...

The Sekonic also breaks down the measurement into 1/10ths increment of a stop. I have a bit of a problem explaining this so I understand where I confused you.

Say I changed my ASA from 100 to 200 in 1/3 stop increments. It would go from ASA 100 to ASA 125, then from ASA 125 to ASA 160, & finally from ASA 160 to ASA 200.

The Minolta's meter will change 3/10ths with every change of ASA. Since there are ten 1/10th changes in this system, Minolta must actually calculate the ASA by 3.33/10ths. You would not normally notice by just looking at the meter.

The Sekonic will change the ASA by 3/10ths, then another 3/10ths, & finally by 4/10ths. Thereby, 3/10+3/10+4/10=10/10, or one stop. How this manifests itself is that sometimes when you change the ASA by only 1/3 stop, the meter will change by 4/10ths. This is strange for photographers used to the Minolta-style system.

We only noticed this when we were "wedging" our B&W darkroom. Wedging is a form of calibration similar to profiling. Exposure & development are calibrated with different ASAs
for a specific enlarger & a specific processing lab.

Wedging is very similar to profiling your entire digital system. If you vary the camera system, film or ASA, lab or chemistry, enlarger or paper, you will need to do another set of wedges which need to be read by an expert with a densitomitor.

Just as in profiling can vastly improve your results with digital, wedging can do the same for traditional B&W film.

Do you know of a paper that explains this? I have noticed small differences in exposures between batches of slide film. Is this something I can use to calibrate my film to the meter, other than just trial and error.

Thanks in advance for the info.

CLTHRS said:

Wedging is very similar to profiling your entire digital system. If
you vary the camera system, film or ASA, lab or chemistry, enlarger
or paper, you will need to do another set of wedges which need to
be read by an expert with a densitomitor.

Just as in profiling can vastly improve your results with digital,
wedging can do the same for traditional B&W film.

Click to expand...

Film emulations all vary in speed by batch number, but not by cut number. Negative films have a wider dynamic range & are mostly compensated for in printing. Paper emulsions also vary by batch, but usually very slightly.

Slide films used to vary quite abit between batches. Most don't vary as much in color as they used to. The best thing to do with slide film is to buy within the same batch you like & test it for color & speed.

There are books that deal with wedging, but they are extremely boring. The hardware woud cost a little under $9000 USD.

The "analysis" feature on the Sekonic is nice & much faster than the older technique. There is also a little window that tells the percent of flash to ambient whenever you take a flash reading.This is useful if the ambient is changing rapidly.

The Minolta IVf has far fewer buttons & a less complex interface. It would be easier to learn on the Minolta, since it has fewer setting to mess up.

Actually, the Sekonic L-608 does analyze, it displays the flash contribution in percentages. Not sure about any other Sekonic meters.

James

Bimthecat said:

The most important feature for an flash meter is the "analyze"
feature.

This allows, with one reading, to determine:

1st: The correct exposure (obviously)
2nd: What is the contribution of the flash, AND what is the
contribution
of the ambient light. (to the total correct exposure)

Rememeber: Flash is F stop only, and ambient is BOTH Fstop and
shutter speed.
Photography is painting with light.
Adjusting these parameters is a required tool for top results.
Understanding, and utilizing, this "analyze" feature is a GIANT
advantage.
With studio strobes outdoors (catalog shoots/portraits) it is
fantastic.

The Minotla 4 F does not analyze, avoid it.
The Minolta 4 does analyze (no longer made, a great meter)
The Minolta 5 does analyze.
If a Seknoic model does not analyze, don't buy it.

Trust me, it's worth repeating.....
Understanding, and using, this "analyze" feature is a GIANT advantage.

Click to expand...