Several great shots here, but I think nr. 2 is the best of the bunch.

Maybe something like this? To bring out the contrast I have solely tweaked the settings in the Shadow/Highlight dialog (Photoshop CS2). The shadow controls were left untoutched (amount 0), while the highlight controls were set to the following values: amount - 55%, tonal width - 50%, radius - 20px. In the Adjustments controls of the same dialog I also set midtone contrast to 10%. With these adjustments the end result doesn't look as "flat" while the contrast between the white smoke and the darker background is still brought out quite strongly. I also made some small adjustments in the channel mixer to remove the slight yellow/green cast that resulted from the shadow/highlight treatment. Hope this was somewhere close to the kind of assistance you wanted...

Looked around some more and found out that the spot finder on the 358 (I know, I know - it said 338 in my previous post - should be 358!) is optional. In other words, make absolutely sure that what you buy have spot meter capabilities - preferably down to 1 degree!!

I've never seen a 308 - but from what I can find it doesn't have spot metering capabilities (which would be one of the main reasons for using a hendheld meter over the in-built...) The 338 on the other hand do offer spot metering (higher price, but not nearly as high as the 508 or 608). If I had to choose between the 338 and the 508 I would choose the 508, but be warned - there's no rational reason for this! - it's just that I've tried the 508 and know that it does what I want from a light-meter.... I wouldn't advice you to rush off and get any of the models really - if you can find a shop that actually have them I suppose it would be a good idea to go there and try one out - just to get a feel for how this will work in practice. Will this work for you and your particular style of shooting? Will it take to long? Will you, after a while, get so annoyed with this nifty piece of electronics, that you place it in perpetual storage? I would also recommend that you try out the evaluative metering on your 20D - the partial metering isn't necessarily the best option in all situations. Let's say you are doing a candid shot, with the camera set to partial metering, and a guy with a white t-shirt walks into the middle of the picture when you press the trigger... If this one person fills some ten percent of the filmplane you will get a horribly underexposed picture, as the camera compensates to make the white t-shirt neutral gray... In this case you would most likely have gotten a correct result with evaluative metering.

The difference is that the 608 is the new and "improved" model - but, since you asked, I checked out Sekonic's website - and it seems none of them are in production any more. The one to look out for now is called L-558R (if my short term memory serves me correctly....) Check it out at www.sekonic.com !

I can appreciate that speed is of the essence when you are doing candid shots - that's one of the reasons I think a handheld meter would be a good idea for you. They aren't inherently more accurate than the built-in meter, BUT - and this is important - a good one will give you true spot metering capabilities. You should be on the lookout for a Sekonic L-508 or L-608; they will provide you with spot metering - and they can make bot incident and reflected readings (rather than having two different meters for the two different modes of metering). When it comes to grey cards - they are almost totally useless, and I will actually claim that they are more useless the more difficult the conditions are!! Again - The Perfect Exposure (the book previously referred to) or something similar might be a very good idea! Some key points about exposing photos got clarified for me by reading this book - and I actually thought I knew quite a bit about exposure:) When I migrated from a 20 years old Canon film-based SLR to the 20D earlier this year - I started out with a lot of crappy exposures. I bought this book, and haven't looked back since. Ok - enough nagging about that damn book - you are of course more than welcome to do what you please:))

I'm a bit late - but I've spent the last 12 hours at work, sooo... here goes: In situations when I believe the camera won't give me the exposure I want in aperture priority or shutter priority - I change metering mode to partial (not evaluating nor center weighed evaluating) - this gives the "narrowest field of view" metering the 20D is capable of. (A graphic representation of the area that is used in metering in this mode can be found in the user manual). Point to a part of your intended compo that should end up as the famed 18% gray (or medium toned blue, green, yellow,...whatever) - since the 20D have no true spot metering mode you may have to zoom in on you subject to get at a narrow field of "medium gray" - do an exposure reading, switch to manual mode and dial in the values you have just measured - surprisingly often you will get what you are after (some time to "learn" what is fitting to use as medium gray might be required). I suppose this sounds like a lot more work than your old camera... but once you get in the habit of doing this, it doesn't take long at all.... If you often shoot subjects with intended medium tones that are in too small areas to be measured by the inbuilt meter I can see no alternative but to get a handheld meter. Then you will get true spot metering with an angle of view somewhere near 1 degree (you might in fact find it easier and faster to use a handheld meter no matter if it's strictly necessary or not). Apart from the practical details I would strongly recommend that you buy a good book on exposure (for all I know you might allready know a LOT about it - if you do, disregard this suggestion:) Something like "The Perfect Exposure" by Jim Zuckerman comes highly recommended by me - for whatever that's worth:)

The only one I could find... It's a good friend of mine (keeping his tounge to himself) and his cliche dog(?) who's definitely showing off his. (He had good reason to, long hike/hot day)... Love the wolfs - and the lusty poodle! :)

A somewhat unexpected twist to this thread:) But I'll willingly participate in any cross pollination - so here's my contribution... Norway, more specifically Molde, a town somewhere along the west coast.

Yes, I have a 20D - and it stores all the metadata in the RAW file with the image itself. In other words, one *.CR2 file per image (unless you store RAW and JPG simultaneously, which the 20D can do). The only time I know of that you get another file to go along is in Photoshop (at least in CS2) where any changes to a raw file (exposure, tint, whitebalance, contrast... etc) is stored in a separate file ending in XMP.

Beautiful heirloom Kimarie. Quite a variation of timepieces on display here:) Well, here's mine - from my living room wall...

That went pretty well ;) BUT if it had been written in my native language I'm sure I would have had a lot more trouble with it - since I say the colors to myself in norwegian I kinda avoid the whole trap...

If I were to choose I would pick the sepia one. Mostly because the two treetrunks in center are (in part)lost in the darknes near the ground in the color version - but that can probably be fixed with some minor tweaking - and then I would have a hard time choosing.