In article <1995Dec16.114725.41944@waikato.ac.nz>, ahogg@waikato.ac.nz says...
>I would appreciate some comment from photographers using spotmeters for
>landscape photography. How do you practically use a 1 degree spotmeter?
>Does it operate in a different way from a modern camera exposure >system? Do you stil need to meter off a part of the landscape that >approximates 18% grey? Are there any good references that can help >identify 18% grey from a typical landscape i.e. what shade of green for >example? I apologise in advance if some of these questions seem naive, >but I am tired of poorly exposed Velvia slides.

To begin, I refer you and others to David Rosen's excellent post
(probably above this post) for a good explanation of reflected metering.
I will add the comments that good spot-metering technique is slow,
and maybe not appropriate for much 35mm work, and it depends on the
premise that meters have no color error, which is generally not true.
What good does it do to spot-meter a clear blue sky, bright green grass,
a red, yellow, or orange flower, etc., without knowing that color error
can introduce errors up to about 1 1/2 stops (!) in the readings?
If the meter is not color corrected (or, if you do not apply a correction factor to saturated colors), many readings will be in error.
(Most of the time, subject color saturation is not high enough to
cause problems [and the ones toward the blue end can even lead you toward good exposures] - but it sure was noticeable when shooting bugs on flowers!). Further comments: I find I get very consistent results
using cameras with a large metering patch (or whole-screen metering)
by placing within the metering area a representative range of subject values (a little sky, a lot of ground, some of a building, etc.).
Least success occurs for me with close-up readings (just which tone IS
middle grey????) and spot readings (same reason, unless you take the time to use them as DR suggests). Also, you may want to become secure
in metering with a film other than Velvia - it is too weird to start with (it is mostly 40 instead of 50, but, for me, the ASA starts rising, the more bright green there is in the subject). BTW, it always seemed
to me that the best quick meter readings would be taken by a meter
that simultaneously read wide-angle reflected light and incident light
- and averaged the readings.
Hope this helps.