Anybody have any experience with the Gossen Ultra-Spot 2 meter? How does it stack up against the Pentax digital?

Thanks to all, Robert

-- Robert Gabriel (rgphoto@att.net), September 19, 2001

Answers

The Ultra Spot has more bells and whistles. The Pentax seems more intuitive and simpe, at least to me. Both offer full view of all information in the viewfinder, which I think is crucial to a spotmeter. The Gossen has more buttons to control all those bells and whistles (all available at the touch of your thumb, conveniently placed but still requires you to toggle back and forth sometimes). The Pentax requires you to keep stuff in your head (not that it's a big problem, but for what it's worth, the Gossen can keep a bunch of readings in memory and display it in the viewfinder. In short, they both are well designed and work well. I think it would come down to things like how well does it fit in your palm, idiosyncratic interactions between the interface and you and so on. I've heard folks occasionally complain about non-linearity in early Gossens - don't think that's a problemn now. FWIW, I got subjectively equally good exposures from both. I would try playing with both, if possible to see what fits. Cheers, DJ.

-- N Dhananjay (ndhanu@umich.edu), September 19, 2001.

Robert,

I recently had another look at the Gossen (my main meter for constant light is the Zone VI modified pentax and I use a Minolta Spotmeter F for flash and they both track extremely well through all light levels in constant light) and I put the Gossen down as soon as I checked it in the store.

The Test?? I set the meters beside each other on stands and read a standard 18% grey card. Make a note of the EV and then place ND filters in front of each meter and note the EV. The Pentax and Minolta tracked well all the way to an ND 3.0 (10 stops) but the Gossen NEVER tracked and by the ND 3.00 was nearly three stops out.

Another Test?? Similarly set the meters in a darkened kitchen pointing at an unpowered electric stove element. Note the reading. Now turn on the stove element and before you can see a glow take a reading — this will demonstrate each meters response to infra-red. Despite the stories about Zone VI filters and baffles the factory supplied Minolta was best here, closely followed by the Pentax and the Gossen was way out of line.

God luck ... WG

-- Walter Glover (walterg@netaus.net.au), September 20, 2001.

I tried the previous model to the Ultra Spot 2 and found it the most unergonomic and backward meter I ever used. As far as the logic is concerned it is of the cow counting school, "count the legs and divide by four" type. Zone system? for the birds...It has a good viewfinder, it is easy to repair by technicians and that is about all. Expensive? indeed but do not let that fool you. This meter will be confined to oblivion now that Gossen has a "catch-up" meter to Sekonic's.

-- Julio Fernandez (gluemax@sympatico.ca), September 27, 2001.

I recently aquired a Spotmaster 2, but this is my first spotmeter (so I can't offer real comparisons)... in my experience, it seems to be a well thought out device:

• The user interface, while probably more complex than that of most other spotmeters, is IMHO easy enough to be learnt by playing around with the meter for 5 minutes (I still don't have the manual). But I have to admit that I'm an IT professional, so maybe I'm biased in favour of computerized interfaces...
• the program modes seem quite useful to my - the way the measured values are displayed and can be ``shifted'' really facilitate contrast evaluation
• Metering accuracy seems to be at least as good as that of my Profisix (i.e. the Spotmaster gives the same readings)
• The viewfinder/display is easy to read

Things about the Spotmaster I don't like so far:

• The user interface feels a bit sluggish - after activating a control for switching modes or shifting values (not when measuring!), it takes appr. half a second until the resp. command is executed. I find this a bit nerving sometimes, e.g. when I want to switch over several values
• Averaging over 10 measurments is not possible in f-stop mode (only in time or zone mode)... but as the zone mode is probably the most useful anyway it's not that important
• In zone mode, you have to measure from dark to light (i.e. determine the lowest zone first)

Things that might make me swap the Spotmaster for another meter (if only the Zone IV wasn't so expensive!):
I tried the stove test Walter described, and can confirm that the Spotmaster measures a hot stove element 2 stops higher than if it's cold, so the Gossen seems to be quite sensitive to infrared light. I'll try to get a response from Gossen about this behaviour (inquiry is pending).
I'll try to measure linearity as soon as I can get hold of some ND filters...

-- Stefan Dalibor (dalibor@cs.fau.de), January 04, 2002.