Spot Meter: Buying Advice

A spot meter should be able to help you obtain more accurate exposures of distant objects, as an incident meter would not be in a position to read the distant illumination. An important caveat is that you need to understand that whatever area you're reading needs to be considered in the context of the brightness range it falls in. What I mean is that the side of a building being read may fall into the upper end of the overall range of exposure in a partcular scene, and as such that reading would need to be adjusted away from "middle grey".

A 'spot meter' of course is necessary to get reflected light readings off highlights and dark areas (see Zone System in Wiki, etc.).

I'd think that would generally work better for architectural and city scape type shooting, at least for me. Unless you are doing "Zone" type measurements, however, you might not need a "spot" meter but just a broader angle reflected meter.

I, personally, am more likely to use incident readings for portrait work or places where lighting is fairly uniform.

When I use an off-camera meter these days (frequently with my old film cameras), I just use a Gossen Luna-Pro SBC for which I have a 'spot' attachment when I want it, and can also use the meter for incident reading with its built-in 'dome' (instruction manual which may help you decide what you need at http://www.butkus.org/chinon/flashes_meters/luna-pro_sbc/luna-pro_splash.htm )

whenever im shooting night stuff, I just estimate the exposure. Its actually really easy once you get used to it, due to the wide exposure range of film

Incident meters are great when you can easily put the meter near the subject, or at least when you can put the meter into light that is pretty much the same as the subject. If you can't do either of those things -- for example, if the subject is far away and its lighting is very different from where you are -- then an incident meter is useless.

Spot meters are great, but honestly I rarely use mine (a Minolta Spot Meter F) because it's much more convenient to use simpler non-spot meters (either a center-weighted meter built into the camera, or a hand-held area meter), or even, as Paul suggested, to simply guess the exposure.

As JDM noted, spot meters are essential for proper Zone System work, but then again nobody's forcing you to use the Zone System.

If you decide to buy a spot meter, I would suggest either the Minolta Spot Meter F or the Pentax Digital Spotmeter. I chose the Minolta simply because it was easier to come by and somewhat less expensive at the time, but prices vary.

Buy one that can do both.

I can't use just one meter. I used Sekonic incident meters mostly, plus a Honeywell V spot, and a small Gossen Digisix. But when I got a Sekonic 758, it did it all, and I confess I don't use anything but that meter now. I would go for an incident meter over a spot meter, if you have to make the choice.

I have an OM-4 and it's spot metering is as accurate as a Sekonic 758DR but has a wider exposure range. Of course it can't act as a flash meter as a Sekonic but it will accurately meter a 2 minute scene adjusting exposure time as the scene lighting changes. It can TTL through your OM lenses and filters which will be more convenient then using an external meter. An OM-2S also has spot metering but I don't know how it compares to the OM-4.

When I shot cityscapes at dawn in the past, I just used my camera's on-board meter. The ones I've done, though, were always with the sun at my back, so metering wasn't really a problem.

When I shoot night cityscapes, I just keep in mind that I'm recording light sources. I prefer not to meter at all because a meter will attempt to render dark sky as 18% gray. I want the sky black. So usually I stop my lens down to f/11 or f/16, set the shutter to B and then hold it open for a while, usually bracketing 15 seconds, 30 seconds, and 1 minute using slow film -- Kodachrome 64 in the old days.

If you're after shooting illuminated structures at night, then a meter can be more important, but even then I don't see why a camera meter can't be used. But then again, my preferred metering pattern is the one Canon used in its old F-1 and FTb -- just a small central rectangle is the only portion of the viewfinder area that is metered. I would just position that rectangle in such a way that it's recording a middle value and use that reading.

I second JDM's suggestion regarding a Luna Pro SBC and the spot attachment. Well, Gossen made a spot attachment that would work with the SBC, which can be pricey when you manage to find one, but they also made a 7.5/15 degree vari-angle attachment that worked with all the Luna Pros, and it's often quite a bit cheaper. I have one of the latter and I find it works well enough for tight metering needs when set to 7.5. Nowadays an LP SBC and the vari-angle attachment can often be bought off eBay for fairly reasonable, if you're patient. I also own a Pentax Spotmeter V that I bought over 20 years ago for not much money. I can't believe how expensive they are now. You could buy an OM-4 for less and an OM-2s for a lot less than what the Pentax Spotmeter V sells for on eBay these days. In fact, an OM-2s sells for less these days than many spotmeters, so if I were in your position, I'd be leaning toward picking up one of them because it seems to me it would make your life easier having the spot meter built in.

The OM-1N meter is pretty good as-is for most purposes. The only tricky bit to watch for is strong sidelight or backlight sneaking in through the eyepiece - it can fool the metering cell inside the prism. Use an eyepiece hood (there are two types) or just shade the finder with your hand or a hat.

I seldom found my Minolta incident meter useful for outdoor nighttime exposures and my Pentax Spotmeter V is too difficult to read in the dark - the illuminator doesn't help much. A newer model spotmeter with illuminated digital readout would probably be much easier to use.

For nighttime exposures I usually rely on a printed out copy of Fred Parker's Ultimate Exposure Computer. That, plus compensating for the film's reciprocity characteristics, usually did the trick.