A great guy here at IBM is retiring and we'd like to get him a present. He's a photography buff, and planning a long road trip with a digital camera, and some of use were contemplating getting him a spotmeter [say an Minolta F]. As bunch of non-experts, we thought we should ask: does it make sense to use a spotmeter with a digital camera?

-- Alex Morrow (alex_morrow@lotus.com), June 15, 2001

Answers

You may get other opinions, but I don't think so. It's too easy to use the review function of a digital camera and see if you like the exposure, if not, erase & take it over. He might like the spot meter for his other photography stuff, but a good external flash that's dedicated to his camera or additional/auxillary lenses might be a better gift.

What digital camera does he have? We might be able to recommend something specific.

-- Jim Strutz (jimstrutz@juno.com), June 15, 2001.

A lot of digital cameras have a spot metering facility built in, and a separate spotmeter isn't of much use with a digital camera anyway, since nothing can be done to alter the contrast ratio of the image.
Much more useful would be some extra memory cards and maybe a spare battery or two for the camera. Those items are always useful. You'll need to find out what type of memory it takes (Compact flash, Smartmedia or memory stick). Perhaps you could even run to a microdrive if the camera is capable of taking one.
Someone should feign interest and find out what camera he's got.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), June 18, 2001.