Equipment

Sekonic L-608

There are quite a few pages on the Web which describe the Sekonic. I will not duplicate these, but rather tell you why I switched from my Gossen Spotmaster to a Sekonic L-608, and how I got it for a great price.

When I bought my first Hasselblad, the need for an exposure meter became evident. Shooting with Canon cameras for years, all the old hand-held meters I had kept from my father's gear were no longer used, and when I dug them out I found them to be no longer accurate, or not even operational at all.

I accepted an offer from a friend to buy a Gossen Spotmaster, and soon got used to looking like someone aiming a shotgun whenever I used it. I liked the fact that all the information was in the viewfinder, I liked the option to show the readings in EV (useful for Hasselblad owners), and I liked the automatic average indicator that comes up whenever you measure several spots in succession. What annoyed me slightly was that in "Zone System" mode, I could only shift down from zone five, not up, which requires reverse thinking for transparency shooting. After missing the correct settings a couple of times due to this inconvenience, I abandoned Zone mode (who knows which point is "Zone V" anyway?) and rather averaged the brightest and darkest spots I wanted in the picture. Occasionally I also missed the option to widen the 1° spot, or measure overall light (reflected or incident). The Spotmaster's major shortcoming, though, is energy use, or energy abuse rather: A 9V block never lasts long, and after I switched to NiMH rechargeables, I always carried two of these on trips, and overnight recharging became an absolute must. But, all in all, I was quite happy with the Spotmaster. It did what I wanted it to do, and had options for more, which I never used: Flash and multiflash modes, cine-mode, differential metering.

So I had waht I needed. Still, like most photographers, I kept reading equipment reviews and hands-on reports on other light meters. Nowadays, choice is limited. To my knowledge, there are only four companies left who produce professional meters: Gossen, Minolta, Pentax and Sekonic. When I learned that Sekonic had put a successor to their highly acclaimed (and for me much overrated) L-508 on the market, I read the first reports and was pleased to hear that the major flaw in the L-508 had been fixed: The new L-608 now displays the meterings in the viewfinder, just as I was used to from the Gossen Spotmaster. (I just find it extremely inconvenient to look through an optical system to aim at a certain point, push a button to measure, and then have to take the meter off my eye to read on an LCD panel on the other side of the meter what I measured. Such is the routine for an L-508 user...) Of course, the 608 still featured the lumisphere for incident light metering, the one mode I had missed in the Spotmaster.

Although I liked the concept of the new Sekonic, I did not rush to the stores, but decided to wait for a good offer. In December, 2001, it looked as though I had found just that. I saw a demo model L-608 offered on German ebay, for just half the price of the unit most stores and online-sellers asked. I placed my maximum bid and was confident I'd get the meter. However, the auction ended while I was at my weekly tennis game, and when I got home to my computer, I saw that I had been outbid big time: While I had entered € 650 as a maximum bid, the unit sold for € 750! (Still, 20-25 % off the "regular" price.)

I was disappointed. But, I thought I'd just wait for another offer on ebay. But the following day, while checking for prices for different things at Robert White, I found Sekonic, checked their price, and could not believe what I read. They asked 319 GBP plus tax, which comes out to € 615! Add shipping, and I was still below what I had bid for the demo model. I placed the online order immediately, five days later, I held my new meter in hand.

For the next day, I played with the Gossen and the Sekonic side by side. If at first I had thought of keeping both, I soon knew I could dismiss the Spotmaster. For one, all metering test I did showed that the two meters were calibrated almost identical, the only difference showing when measuring into bright light. There, the Sekonic gives a marginally lower light reading, off by 2-4 tenths of an EV. If this has to do with less flare on the lens of the Sekonic, I don't know. But, since I have a tendency to underexpose these shots anyway (and always bracket therefore), I thought that the Sekonic may in fact give me a "better" EV to start with; one which gives me better chances to avoid underexposure. Also, the circle indicating the measuring area seems slightly larger in the Sekonic, suggesting that either the Sekonic covers slightly more that 1°, or the Spotmaster slighlty less.

The biggest difference I noticed when playing with the two meters was handling, and here the Gossen clearly wins. The Sekonic does not give me the solid feel of the Spotmaster. Being used to the big grip and low viewing prism construction, it seemed awkward to look through a straight optical system, with the lumisphere prone to swivel right in front of my forehead, and the "grip" being actually the case of the meter with all sorts of buttons so close by that I was afraid to push one of them accidentally. It took me several readings to learn how to hold the Sekonic without danger of pushing a button. But really, how could I expect a light meter which at 268g is just two-thirds the weight of the one I was used to to feel solid? Of course it feels fragile. But I started to re-think.

After all, weight is a big issue. If you carry heavy cameras and lenses, any gramm you save on "periphery" is a huge bonus. Size matters, too, when it comes to packing all the gear in the on-board backpack for flying. With its dimensions of 90x170x48mm, the Sekonic is about the same in width, but 4cm shorter and 6mm less in depth. The shortness is crucial: I am now able to put the light meter in the bag upright rather that flat, which means I gain quite a bit of space in the Lowe Pro Photo Trekker.

After all these tests and ponderings, I decided that one light meter was enough. So I sold the Spotmaster on ebay.