M6 Meter Question (Caution Large Pictures)

ChadHahn

ChadHahn

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Does the meter in a M6 TTL stay accurate until the battery dies or does it slowly lose it's accuracy?

I just got a roll of 400CN developed and the first few shots are perfectly exposed (of course :) ) but then the pictures start to get grainy and many of them look under-exposed.

At first I thought that it was the processing. Although where I take my pictures is generally very good, I thought I might have gotten a roll in at the end of the developers life.

Then I started to wonder about the meter. A quick Google didn't reveal anything so I came here.

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Thanks,
 
Meter accuracy depends on the batteries you use If you use the alkaline cells voltage will decrease as you use the meter. Silver Oxide cells maintain their voltage to the end and then suddenly die.
 
Well they're silver oxide so it's not the batteries.

I'll have to watch the exposure and see if the meter is reading right.

Chad
 
Odd. Surely these days the cameras have regulators built in so that the metering is consistent until the battery gives a low-battery warning ? Battery type "should" only be a problem when changing battery type from the old-but-poisonous, super-consistent mercury cells to a newer alternative ? And of course that is not the case with an M6.
 
This is just a case of mis-metering...it's not the batteries or the processing...just the fact that you have two objects on the opposite end of the contrast range....flowers white, leaves black...seems you may have metered for the flowers and then printed/scanned/photoshoped whatever for the leaves...in that case you will ALWAYS have grain in the shadow area.
 
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When I metered I metered for the leaves. The last picture on the roll is of a basket ball hoop on a concrete court, pretty much all 18% grey and it is grainy as well.

Today when I was shooting, I metered on some green cactus and it read f16 @ 1/500th. Not bad except that I had a yellow filter on. It seem like my meter is reading too much light.

I'll have to see what this roll looks like.
 
Chad

My M6 started to "miss" frames 8 or 9 films after I got it [by "miss" I mean they would be totally underexposed]. There might be no missed frames for three films, then there'd be three frames missing on one roll. They usually coincided with very bright days where I'd wanted to use a wide aperture ie I had to use 1/500, 1/1000.

I've just had my M6 back from CRR in Luton after a full service. I trust the problem is fixed, haven't taken any pictures with it yet - I think the shutter was sticking at high speeds. I doubt the camera was serviced in the 15 years before I got it.

Perhaps if the problem becomes worse a shutter check might be a good idea. You know that the shots that are under will be the really great ones...

Paul
 
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