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m9 spot light meter

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gooomz

Member
i know the m9 has light meter that is very biased to toward the center of the frame but what i am discovering is that it almost functions as a spot light meter since it is very biased to the light in the focus frame.

wondering if other get the same results.
 
S

Seafurydriver

Guest
The M9 uses a center weighted pattern that is biased down and away. People forget that the meter is TTL, so if you have a 90mm or 135mm lens mounted it will seem in the viewfinder to be much more of a spot meter. The meter only sees what the lens see, and with a 50, 90 or 135mm lens mounted it is much less than the full 0.72x viewfinder of the M9.
 
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gooomz

Member
so if using a 50mm most of the time do you think of the M9 as having a spot meter pretty taking a light reading of only what is in the focus patch?
 
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Seafurydriver

Guest
With a 50mm lens mounted on the M9 the meter is going to only see the light that falls within the 50mm frame lines. Although I have never seen a graphic to represent the pattern, I imagine it looks something like a bell curve, namely stronger on the bottom than the top and stronger in the middle than the sides. With this in mind if I had a 50mm lens mounted I would definitely be mindful of more than just the rangefinder patch when taking light readings. If I had a 90mm or 135mm lens mounted then I think it would be OK to look at the patch as a spot meter.
 
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Seafurydriver

Guest
gooomz said:
i am sorry, why is the bottom of the 50mm frame more weighted then the top of the frame?
Click to expand...
Answer: It isn't

Sorry to throw you off, but I have always thought of the meter as being more weighted to the bottom of the frame due to the position of the photo diode in the bottom of the camera base. In doing some research this evening the consensus of opinion seems to be that the center weighted meter is more or less evenly distributed from the center out with no bias in any orientation. Actually this makes sense, otherwise the meter would be off when exposing in portrait mode. Sorry to confuse you and thanks for teaching me something about my M9.
 
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