Weston Master V Light Meter

I picked up a mint condition Weston Master V light metre last summer, and having stowed it away with my old Minolta 7000 (I can say that on a Pentax site, can't I?) promptly forgot about it until rummaging around for something else just recently. I love the accompanying booklet and diagrams (I didn't realise that we're all supposed to wear a suit and tie whilst taking photographs) as well as the somewhat formal tone of the instructions ( best 'BBC voice' whilst reading if you wouldn't mind).
Has anyone else either owned, or had experience with this delightful little device and if so, can it still cut the mustard in this digital age?

(I fitted new batteries in the old Minolta and fired it up-which promptly coughed and kicked out a cloud of dust- as well as my K10D & K30 then tested their respective metre readings against the Weston. This produced a somewhat mixed bag of results in terms of digital images?)

Bob.

The Weston Master is OK as a meter, but the angle of acceptance is very wide. It takes some care in use, but does incident light readings well and of course needs no battery.

As a separate meter, there are much more sensitive ones now and many double as flash meters as well. To be honest, I don't see any advantage over the camera meter, which is more sensitive and possibly more accurate.

If I had the choice I would use a spot meter in preference, Pentax, Soligor or Minolta, but cameras also have that facility now.

So not overwhelming excitement from me I'm afraid, but at one time it would have been very different and I have used the Weston Master V with great success.

There was a time when just about everyone had one. I still have one that I used to use as a back up to various Lunasix, Minolta or Gossen meters. As John says not very sensitive. A certain retro charm now from a piece of pretty poor British design and engineering; hold the meter vertically and take a reading, now turn it on its side and take a reading - different result by about a stop! You will notice that not all the holes in the baffle are drilled through, this is because of the different sensitivies of individual cells. Give me a Minolta meter any day.

I could take a number of different readings of a scene and let the Minolta averaqe them out, put a Pentax on 'P' and take a reading, same result.

I had a WM IV, and I may later have had a V (can't remember), and my abiding memory of it was the ease with which the meter glass came loose if you dropped it - I think I had mine repaired for this problem on several occasions. Whatever the make, give me a solid state meter anytime.

My son Adam is studying Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam. I bought him a working, mint Weston Master V from Rocky Cameras for £8 recently as he's using a film camera as part of a project. Lovely thing to use and I thought it a fine thing still after all these years.

You got him a Pentax 6x7 for this project too right?!

Thank you for the input guys, and (shhhhhhh!!) god bless Minolta. The variations in digital image results -on manual- to the Weston readings didn't deliver the goods to be quite honest with you, which is why I posed my previous question.
So the consensus of opinion here is that light metres doesn't have any significant advantages over the current crop of inbuilt metering systems built into the average (or more specifically Pentax) DSLR metering systems?

Sorry, that should have read 'light meters don't have...

I've corrected the title for you.