Reveni Labs Spot Meter: First Impressions

I received my Reveni Labs spot meter today. It arrived some months later than expected with what seems  to be the customary Covid excuses and some trouble assembling and calibrating the units. It comes well packaged in a green credentialed brown box, bubble wrap (ironically), and a nice carrying case. Four LR44 batteries were included (of which 2 are required to operate it). There is an online manual. 

The manual does not explain how to open the battery lid and with some trepidation I used a table knife to pry the little clip and the lid came off fine.  I inserted the two batteries plus side up and snapped the lid back into place. The manual says the batteries are good for 5 hours of operation. This does not seem like a lot but experience will tell. (For reference I bought the Pentax in the summer of 2018 and still have the same batteries.)

For the purposes of this first impressions post I am coming to this from the standpoint of using a Pentax analog spot meter which I have modified for Zone system use. Personally this combination revolutionized my understanding of exposures and I have hardly had reason to complain about my exposures since. The Pentax is large and pistol shaped.

Pentax Spotmeter (with Zone scales attached)

The primary reasons for purchasing the Reveni Labs version are 1) Support an emerging community around analog photography, 2) Find something smaller and lighter as an alternative of the Pentax. It costs $225 CAD (Canadian dollars) plus shipping. Pentax spotmeters are readily available from Japan and cost about $350 CAD with shipping to the UK. I expect Reveni's success should depress the used spot meter prices. 

I must admit as I watched videos about the Reveni meter and waited, I could see that I might be disappointed. I have a ritual, especially for large format, that revolves around the Pentax and my understanding of zones and tone placement in that system revolves around that wonderful analog wheel on its side. 

Reveni Spot Meter next to the Pentax
(It is much smaller and lighter. 33g vs 435g)

Operation

Besides wanting to look at the wrong end the thing started up as advertised. It takes a few seconds to power on (Being digital the CPU has to boot up whereas the Pentax just turns on the circuit when you press the trigger. The time to a reading is the time it takes the meter to swing.) 

There are 4 buttons and a display you look through. In a clever way Reveni has avoided the complicated optics of the Pentax meter by using one eye to look at the screen and the other subject. Your brain superimposes the readings from the screen over the image the other eye receives from the scene. While clever this does not work well close up (Reveni explains why parallax defeats their system close up.) and there can be wild differences. If you work with subjects in the range around 10ft (3m) this is probably not the meter for you. I can imagine portraits would be nearly impossible. 

In single meter mode you press the main/power button to take a reading. The screen displays the Ev, ISO, shutter speed and aperture. When you release the button it locks or freezes the reading (and shows 'Locked' on the screen). You can hold the same button down to get a continuous reading. You can also make a comparison of the locked reading using the menu button and the Ev field shows the difference from the locked reading. Kind of useful to get a view of the range of the scene. 

There are other metering modes including an average (which would seem to defeat the purpose of a spot meter) mode where it averages two readings. A zone mode (probably the one I am most interested in), a Precision Metering Mode (based off of Nick Carver's own branding of the Zone system). Nick usefully provides training videos (payment required) for those who want it. (see link above)

Beyond that you can set the ISO (straightforward), Aperture or Shutter Priority (the arrow buttons are used to increment or decrement those values while metering), Exposure Compensation (useful I suppose for filter compensation), Stop Increments (whole, half, or thirds) (while useful sounding the apertures are expressed as whole numbers and not thirds and I do not own a lens that offers f29 (f22 2/3). Third stops for shutter speeds do me no good either. I would either give fractions though this may not be possible given the resolution of the screen or some kind of fraction icon. (These seems aimed at or modeled on digital cameras which ironically already have a meter!). 

You can also change sleep and shutdown times, calibration offset (though Reveni reckons you should use exposure compensation if you disagree with their compensation), and the reticle position (perhaps useful for those portrait applications?) 

First Use

In my first hour of use I had trouble confidently getting a reading that matched my Pentax. The menus system is not well explained in my perusal of the online manual. Getting to the menus from the 'Single' meter mode requires a double click of the menu button owing to its dual use for the compare function. When I configured the meter to the Zone mode the menu was accessed with a single button press. It seems like the usual button menu hell of most electronic devices where patience and lots of practice eventually gets you to some level of proficiency. I do not feel the system works in a consistent fashion. (There also seems to be issues with debouncing of the switch actuation which contributes to the overall confusion as sometimes it seems a switch press is not acknowledged.) 

Zone Mode

In the Zone mode you are presented with the Zone Mode splash screen on start-up. You click the power button and then are asked to pick a tone. This however is wrong. You are meant to hold the button down and the screen moves to 'pick a tone' as long as you hold down the button the Ev in the bottom of the screen changes as you point the meter around the scene. Once you release the button the screen appears to freeze. You press the button again and are asked to set the zone for that reading using the left right arrow buttons. Then press the power button again (sometimes twice?) and you are given the metering screen showing the ISO, shutter and aperture settings. You can then scroll through aperture and shutter pairs using the arrows. 

(I had to rewrite this section as I discovered the system is not as stupid as I thought.)

Here are my complaints with this. Firstly when the screen goes to sleep a button press not only awakens the screen but also advances you through the above sequence. So if I was faffing about while it said 'pick tone' and the screen went out a fresh button press would awake the screen and also take me to assign a zone before it went to sleep. So you are expected to go through the whole metering process without stopping. This can probably be alleviated somewhat with a longer sleep timer selected in the config menu, though this can only be extended to 30 seconds. 

After you assign the tone to a zone the metering display comes up and it is not obvious how to get back to the beginning of the metering session. It seems you are meant to hit the menu button but this then presents 'exposure compensation' until you press the power button again . Why can't I press the power button again to get it to cycle through again? 

I find the whole system very confusing. Furthermore with the analog dial on the Pentax I can see all the shutter/aperture pairs without scrolling though them. My apertures are given in increments 1/3 stop which matches many of my lenses. 

Expected Use

Here is how I expect I will use the Reveni. In the Zone mode I would only change the zone to Zone 3 for color negative film and most black and white pictures. I would use this zone to assign my shadow tone to as this corresponds to how I use the Pentax meter. (Some may choose Zone 2 depending on how they shoot the scene, you get the idea...) 

The other zone setting I would use is 7 for color slide film and this represents the zone to place the highlights of the scene. Frustratingly the Zone setting is reset to 5 when the meter powers down. This requires one to set the zone again explicitly. Not the end of the world but seems to make it a little more difficult to use especially for roll film. 

When I shoot large format I tend to default to f32 to get good sharpness across the scene and so the meter would be set to aperture priority and preset to f32. I then just read off the shutter speed then make my reciprocity compensation if needed and set my shutter accordingly. If I need a higher or lower aperture I can adjust with the left and right arrows. In general, for landscape work,  I do not aim for a shutter speed when shooting large format unless I am worried about wind for instance.

If I am shooting medium format handheld then I would opt for shutter priority as my preference is to shoot at 1/125 second generally and so would preset that shutter speed and read off the aperture. 

If I find the size and weight compelling I am tempted to make a version of the Pentax aperture dial and attach it to the Reveni meter in some fashion (even if by the lanyard). Then I imagine I would just use it in single reading mode and use the Ev reading then apply that number to the dial and then read off the shutter speed and aperture.