Hot shoe Meter ...

[Steve Karr]

Hio everyone,
So last night I was buying some 8x10 tanks & stuff from a friend and spotted a rangefinder sitting on a box. I ask "what's up" and he gave it to me. Free. Strange .

So I have a Beauty LM with a f/1.9 COATED lens and the shutter works great (I ran a roll of Plus X thru this morning) this little gem is pretty darn sharp, even at f2.0

So now I want a meter to go on top of it, hot shoe style. I see we have a Voigtlander VC Meter in the classifieds ... but I have $19.00 into this camera and was going to leave it in the car for "those moments". Non Leica treatment here.

How are the old Kodaklux or some of the 50's meters? I of course would like to shoot it in lesser light where the old meters die in accuracy.

Hmmm ....

Steve

 

[Pompiere]

If you are handy with a soldering iron, you could replace the cell in the camera's meter. There are how-to articles on the web that outline scavanging a solar cell out of a cheap calculator and swapping it into the camera. One of the old selenium hot shoe meters is likely going to be on its last legs, anyway.

 

[hanskerensky]

Most of the meters who are accurate in low light are battery powered.

Just found in a car boot sale a Japanese accesoire shoe lightmeter.

It's from Pallas and it's EV scale goes from -1 till 24.

Still not sure about the exact battery it needs (probably mercury type) but it shows signs of life on a SR44 button cell.

Normally i use a handheld Gossen Digisix which you can also mount on a hot shoe. Think that
this one is to "modern" looking for your Beauty LM.

 

[Steve Karr]

So after testing, buying $50 in filters & hood, getting everything squared away, I killed my Beauty rangefinder...

It started to mis-fire. So being good with stuff like that, I opened it up to see what to adjust. Well, a few hours later ... dead.

Lesson of the day ... Stay out of the Leica!

Steve

PS. I did end up getting a Kodalux. $10 on eBay. Works great & accurate too.

 

[hanskerensky]

The camera looks so nice, even from the inside ! Pity.