lamiaceae wrote:
Yes, note all the cautions. But don't get the idea that all Gossen light meters are "bad", if anything their "better" one are great. See if you can hunt down a used Gossen Luna Pro or Luna Six. I currently have a Luna Six, I used to have the slightly better Luna Pro but that was stolen. There are a few different types of Gossen Luna Pro and Six meters, and other models. Basically, avoid any vintage light meter that does not have a battery (and a battery model that can be replaced today), meaning in most cases a Cadmium Cell meter. Though there were Selenium battery powered (usually high end) meter light cells as well. Another OK brand was Sekonic. Though that being said, I much more often use my Minolta Spot Meter. You can guess how old this stuff is. All pre-digital. Like your Pilot, another common but usually dead meter today was the Weston Meter.
Yes, those evil 1.35v Mercury batteries. My old Pentax Spotmatic needs 1.35v batteries for its meter, so I just use a hand held meter. Luckily all my Pentax K film cameras use 1.5v Silver Oxide or Other "76" batteries. And some of those have electronic shutters!
Yes, note all the cautions. But don't get the ide... (
show quote)
for all you need to know on adapting from discontinued mercury batteries to the modern silver-oxide equivalents. Note that Alkaline cells put out a somewhat lower voltage and are not constant enough over their life time for dependable readings from your meter.
In 2006 I purchased PX625 battery adapters for a Lunasix and an SRT-101, from Frans de Gruijter in the Netherlands. The adapters have step-down resistors dropping silver-oxides from 1.6 V to 1.35 V and they have worked perfectly. His email address is given at the bottom of the above .pdf.