Hi Bob,(posted 9058 days ago)I'm not familiar with the Minolta M specifically, but any meter, spot or otherwise, simply says "for the amount of light I'm seeing, here is the exposure to produce 18% gray in the print". You'll have to adjust the exposure depending on skin tone, to put a skin reading in the zone you desire. Personally, I prefer an incident reading or a gray card reading, unless there is something unusual about the scene- very wide brightness range, for example. I saw a web site a few days ago that speciallized in manuals for photo equipment, but alas, I didn't bookmark it. Possible a search would turn it up again.