Olympus 35 SP battery compartment (repair question)?

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IK13

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In a sudden GAS attack last week I bought an SP (off the classifieds here). Got the camera today and it seemed to be overall in good shape. The lens is clear, and everything appeared to work. Thought I'll try it against my current fixed lens RF favorite (as far as IQ goes) - the inexpensive Konica S2.

The light meter reading was way off though.
No problem - I had converted a few cameras to use silver batteries by soldering a schottky diode in the circuit.

So I dropped the bottom plate and the battery compartment appear to have just one screw, holding the (-) contact spring. It's all plastic housing and I can't see anything else holding it. Well, I tried to unscrew this screw and it won't come out. It would turn all day long, but won't come out. The battery nest seemed very clean, but I suppose the thread was not in good shape and I didn't want to start with the pliers...

So at this moment I say to myself "screw it" (pun intended) - if it doesn't want to come out I'll just use zinc-air batteries.I put the bottom plate back, put the battery ...and no light meter. 😡
I guess when I was trying to unscrew the battery compartment the wire came off :bang:

So now I have to fix it one way or another.

The problem is - I have no idea how to get the battery compartment/nest out. It seems to be holding pretty strong (glued?), so I'm betting it's not held only (if at all?) by this little screw.

How should I get the battery compartment out? Or might be I'm not supposed to?
Anybody?
 
I know I can use it without the meter. Just want to get it all working.
Yes, the spot meter is nice, even if very rudimentary.
 
Thanks cweg,
I've done it on a few Konica S2 without taking the lens assembly out - the whole battery compartment there comes off and it's really easy.
 
Yes, I know. I disassembled a S2 myself and taking out the battery chamber is a two screws thing but if the chamber is glued like the 35SP I would take off the Objektiv to fix the cable. It's no big job and the meter works after that correctly.
 
Thanks John,

That's what I figured. So what what would be the best way to take the battery compartment out (I have to resolder the wire)?
Pry it out and hope it won't break?

I don't think I can access the glue points and soaking it all with thinner just doesn't sound right.

Or do as cweg suggested and take the whole lens assembly out and access it from there while still in place?
 
Thanks John. Got it. The wire was so short that I had to remove the lens plate anyway. Put the schottky diode there and the meter seems ok.

Side note:
I was comparing the readings to the 20D and at first I was seeing discrepancies. Took me about 10 minutes to realise that the 20D was in evaluative mode. Once switched to average and the readings got very close.
I think the spotmeter is also quite useful also.

Had to remove the top to take out the lens plate so I cleaned the viewfinder too. Was sort of surprised to find the viewfinder assembly covered with black paper, instead of a black metal lid like other "lesser" rf are.
The focusing ring gets a little stiff (or rather sticky) towards the infinity, but it reaches and registers infinity right on, so I decided to leave it at that.

BTW - does anybody know what is the little screw in the middle of the ISO dial for?
 
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