Suggestions for a manual SLR with spot metering

[ricksplace]

The Mamiya Sekor 1000 DTL and 500 DTL have spot and average metering. The DTL stands for dual, through lens metering. The camera has a switch for spot or average metering, and a shaded area in the viewfinder for the spot metering area. Screw mount lenses, all manual camera. Built like a tank. First SLR I ever owned, some 40 years ago. I recently bought one on the 'bay out of nostalgia. I find I use it quite a bit. IIRC, I paid $15 for it with a working meter. Lots of them available.

[Lee L]

Built like a tank.

I was in retail when these were on the market new. They had the highest early failure rate of any SLR I knew of. I sold a number of them and had a very high percentage (relative to other makes) come back for repair within a year, so always recommended other brands, Minolta, Canon, Fuji, Nikon, Pentax, over them. My best friend's younger brother bought the 500 DTL to save $75 over a similar model from the other brands, and ended up with a camera beyond economical repair 9 months later on its second trip to the repair shop with metering and mechanical problems. Perhaps the ones that survived the first couple of years are keepers, or perhaps it was a QC issue with some well made/assembled, and others not.

BTW, this thread has been revived after lying dormant for over a year. I suspect the OP has his camera by now, even if continued posts might be useful to others.

Lee

[Paul Howell]

In the 42MM SM, Chion's 450 has a spot function, I dont know what the percentage of the meter area is. It also has an odd viewfinder with a small waist level finder on top of the eye level finder with a switch to change view from the eyelevel to the waist level. I saw one at a pawn shop last week no battery so I dont know if the meter worked or not, the wasit level to eye level finder did not seem very funcitonal.

[John Hermanson]

Olympus offers several nice choices. OM-2S does single spot metering in manual mode. The OM-4 / 4T / 4Ti allows you to take as many as 8 spot readings, the camera averages them together. T models have titanium top and bottom covers and are (imo) beautiful pieces of engineering. OM-3 / 3Ti also do 8 spot readings but offer full MECHANICAL shutter (not battery dependent. 3Ti also does otf flash with Olympus T flashes. OM-3 and 4 from early production had some battery drain issues. You are safest with any 4T or Ti. An OM-3Ti will suely set you back the most. Hope this helps.
John, www.zuiko.com

[Mike Kovacs]

I use my Nikon F3HP (80/20 centre weighted) essentially as a spot meter and it never lets me down. If you do a weighted calculation based on 35mm film area, you'll see it is essentially a spot meter.

IMO - for "real" spot metering, you can't beat a handheld 1 deg spot meter. Its a PITA moving a camera around to take spot readings, especially if you have your composition locked in and you are just monitoring light intensity when the light is changing quickly.

[AgX]

The Canon T90 has got a spot meter which you can read via a quite large balance type scale.
You can handle that scale like that of the Profisix/Lunasix meters of Gossen. That was reason to me to buy that camera.
However it's questionable whether it's still a `manual´ camera. However, it is manual focus.

[narsuitus]

Also consider the Pentax Spotmatic

[RetroMan]

Bronica ETRSi; Well it's not 35mm, but if you stick a speedgrip and an AE3 prism on it it will spotmeter (sort of) and it handles like 35mm and the results are really special.

[Thorney]

Mark,

This may seem facile to you, but since you already have a spotmeter why not get whatever SLR you like best and continue with the hand meter? That way you don't need to fine tune things to a new meter.

I've used the same Pentax analog 1 degree spotmeter since 1982 and it is a champ! Zone VI modified the meter in 1992. It has never let me down.

I have a D200 with a built in spotmeter that I rarely use, but it gave exactly the same gray card reading as my Pentax when I compared them. So I imagine a new or recent Nikon 35mm SLR would have a similar spotmeter.

I wouldn't want a spotmeter that was larger than 1 degree though.

Regards,
Thorney

[cao]

Also consider the Pentax Spotmatic

No. The Spottie you or I could buy at the time had an averaging meter. It had a spot meter though in prototype versions. I will recommend the T90 as a good spot metering manual focus camera. I use mine with FD, Adaptall II, and M42 lenses.