ME meter vs handheld

I did something foolish and let my Sekonic 758D go before xmas, since then I have been relying on the built in meter in the ME. I've not been very impressed with the negative results I get compared to when I used the handheld spot meter, I'm not sure if its just the way things are and the handheld spot will always prove better than the built in or whether I am not using ME to its best potential.

Any thought/advice or experience. I'm just about ready to buy another handheld spot meter but the money would be valued elsewhere if I didn't need to.

Thank you

depends on what and how you use it.
A grey card might suffice...
A change in how you use/interpet your cameras readings might do it, or you may want to get another handheld.

I use all three techniques depending on my needs.

I typically shoot landscapes, seascapes. Sometimes close in for detail and other times the frame cut by the horizon. I think I may of spoilt myself with the spotmeter. I find that now I'm bracketing like crazy in hope rather than nailing it like I used to with the spot. I work a mix of BW and colour, the BW I develop myself the colour I shoot on transparency film and send off.

I always found that my MX, which I'd imagine to be similar to the ME, always gave best results when pointed at the ground excluding the sky.

I've always preferred to use hand held meters in incident mode, though.

I know I'll find a fountain of info once I start searching, but any preferences on handheld incident meters?

Thank you

Can't go wrong with Minolta. I've got an Autometer III which you can pick up quite cheaply as most folk want a meter for flash work and the III was ambient only. Normally a few on eBay at any given time and they last forever - incredibly accurate and you can get accessories (like a spot meter attachment for reflected readings).

Do you mean an ME, or an ME Super? I used an ME Super for many years and found for transparencies the ME Super's light meter under-exposed if you included sky in the frame. As a result I used the camera on manual and just tipped it down far enough to exclude the sky and used the resultant reading. If there was the possibility to meter off an area of grass that usually worked. If the sky was especially bright and the ground especially dark I would compromise, usually one stop darker than the reading from the ground. The vast majority of the time I got very good exposures that way. For slides, I found that Av mode was not accurate enough and the exposure compensation dial more fiddly than using manual.

Although it has its quirks, the ME Super light meter worked very well with a little practice.

Hope this helps. Kris.

Like Hefty1, I have the Minolta Auto Meter III with incident, reflective and spot attachments. The spot attachment is only 10 degrees however. You can also get a tiny little incident attachment on a swan neck which you can poke into tiny spaces. My only gripe is that I find the battery is flat every time I go to use it, so I remove it after use.

I bought it to replace my Minolta Flash IV which was stolen. The Flash IV is easier to use having dials rather than buttons and is a flash meter too as you might guess. The better of the two IMO.

Its the ME Super I have.

When I entered the world of film it was with medium format a spot meter and using the zone system for my exposure placement. There seems to be little talk of dynamic range by 35mm users or am I imagining it?

People do talk about dynamic range with 35mm but I worked out how to get good exposures for slides from the ME Super just by experience. (I spent most of my film years shooting slides as I used them for lectures.) As you know, slide film is very intolerant of bad exposure, even by a single stop. I have recently been getting my head around the zone system as, of course, my Horseman has no light meter. One of the reasons I like going back to using my old film cameras is to remind myself how I used to do it. With the histogram facility on digital cameras my technique has changed, and not necessarily for the better

Best wishes, Kris.

Western Master V every time, keep them calibrated though

Just a point: the ME/ME Super/MEF can suffer from massive underexposure when the variable resistor that is the ISO/Ev adjustment gets dirty
Screwed up a wedding that way
In the end I became a dab hand at replacing the part (have an ME-Super service manual) and Pentax, at the time, used to sell the parts almost at cost (those were the days!!).
Matt

My method too. I found that this method worked well for many film cameras.