I’m always surprised at the vast number of oddball, small-manufacturer devices that have been offered up for use by cinematographers over the history of the artform. The Spotron meter you see above is the latest example, and I had never heard of it until seeing this ad in the August 1966 issue of American Cinematographer. It looks like something of a Franken-device to me. The dial on the side of the upper illustration seems to have been borrowed from an old Weston incident meter while the barrel of the lower one has some forward lineage to the venerable Pentax Digital Spotmeter.
With a list price of $49.50 and $99.50 respectively, at least they were cheap…even for their time!
Never used that model but I always used a spot meter in conjunction with the Spectra. Spectra gave me exposure at the main part of the scene and the spot would tell me if there were elements of the scene that were too far over or under exposed. Spot meter reminded me of Bill Butler who was the cinematographer for the 1976 film Raid on Entebbe. It was shot on video and when Bill was asked how it was to work with a video camera, his reply was, it was the best 100 Thousand Dollar spot meter I ever used!
Hey Greg – I remember you using the Pentax Digital Spot Meter from time to time in exactly the way you describe…