M6 light meter problem.

[Gregoryniss]

So I just bought a M6 on Ebay and the meter seems to be off. It's overexposing by at least 3-4 stops compared to my sekonic L-208 which I've used for over a year now and had reliable results.

Does anyone know if the M6 meter will start to overexpose if the battery is starting to die? Or does this mean that the meter is just off?

I've tried metering the exact same scenes between the two meters such as a brick wall, and my palm. both under the same lighting conditions?

Anyone else have similar problems? I would try to search for it but you can't search M6 cause it's only 2 characters... (that rule should be changed to 2 characters rather than 3).

Thank you!

Greg

 

[daninjc]

I bought a M6 from a member here on RFF, it came with the meter off as well.
The problem was in the ISO selector, that was stuck on a specific value: metering would not change by rotating the ISO wheel. I had to take the camera to be repaired. It got a CLA as well, so I was happy because I complied with the tradition (newly-bought leica must undergo CLA). It has worked flawlessly since.

 

[Gregoryniss]

so it looks like the ISO dial isn't actually doing anything, and that it's stuck on one ISO.

I see there are some wires underneath the film pressure plate, I wonder if it'd be an easy fix...

I think this means i'll have to send it back to the Ebay seller, which sucks since he lives in europe and I live in Tacoma.... !@#$

Thanks for the help all

 

[mudride]

Try rotating the ISO-dial back and forth (from asa6 to asa6400) a couple of times; it might help.

 

[Stelios]

Or send it for a to a technician, it's fairly easy to fix I'd think. Bit of cleaning I guess.
Or convert to an M4. Who uses lightmeters anyway? 😛

 

[bizarrius]

Or send it for a to a technician, it's fairly easy to fix I'd think. Bit of cleaning I guess.
Or convert to an M4. Who uses lightmeters anyway? 😛

people in other countries than greece have exposures different than 1/250 - f16 and iso 400 😀
(saying that greece has only sunny days)

 

[ipu]

I actually had similar problem with my M6 a couple of years ago.
I changed the battery, and cleaned the contacts on the backdoor and on the body (with a clean cotton-cloth or something like that...) as well as the battery cavity and rotated the ISO-dial back and forth. I can´t tell which of these operations made the difference but the meter is now working and accurate. My uncle told me to give it a few whack on the side, and it´ll be just fine... didn't do that.. Hope you get it working, it's a nice camera.
According to the M6 instruction book "althought the exposure meter will continue to read accurately as long as they (LEDs) light up at all."