What do I do with this seller and his camera ?

Basically, incidence and reflected meters are based on an 18% midtone. To change a reflected meter to an incidence meter simply requires a diffuser in front of the meter that transmits 18% of the light incident on it. A flat diffuser would compensate for the angle of incidence and is great for copy work; a hemispheric diffuser would be better for three-dimensional subjects. How much on the hemisphere the cell can "see" would be important.
 
Finder

Hey your description is better then mine. Hisssss

The incident reading is independent of the (reflectance of) the sceane being photographed.

Noel
 
Xmas said:
Finder

Hey your description is better then mine. Hisssss

The incident reading is independent of the (reflectance of) the sceane being photographed.

Noel


Correct, Noel, reflective reading, or reflective metering, is the camera (or meter) directly pointing to the subject.


Well, I have mines' too. Thus I lost hope for memorizing the difference between convex and concave. So I use the terms "dome shaped" and "soup plate shaped" :)


See you,
Ruben
 
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Ruben

If I was better orgainsed I'd learn the zone system, or stick a photocopy of the Weston calculator on each camera back, or both.

Noel
 
FSU SELLER OFFERED FULL REFUND !


After comming back from his hollidays, the seller and me re-established contact. Since he is a 100% feedback, I hesitated and showed patience for some two weeks and finally he contacted me.

He offered me three options, one of them being FULL REFUND. Upon his courtesy manners and my interests, I proposed him to leave the non-working camera with me and get a partial refund. True I am interested in the meter, which till now I have not tested, but I didn't like as well being in a position of squeezing his throat about the 100% feedback to a man treating me courteously. Therefore in my offer, I included this factor too.

Although not framed in a formal contract, I will destinate his refund (remaining at Paypal) to another Kiev, or related gear, the day he mails me he has got something good.

Cheers,
Ruben
 
Xmas said:
Ruben

I'll locate you a circuit diagram for the Kievs exposure meter - next.

The potentiometer is the brown circular thing underneath the circular exposure calculator.

If you still had both your Kiev cells the first step would be to compare them by selecting volts and seeing if both cells gave the same voltage when exposed to the same light. If one gave no volts you would need to store it for later experiments. If the cell in the camera was similar in voltage to a new cell it would not be worth while replacing it. (note in situ there are two resistors across the photo cell, the potentiometer and a fixed resistor, hence the need for the circuit diagram.)

The next step would be to see if the both ends of the pot (potentiometer) were connected (a hair line crack in the substrate would spoil our fun).

I dont recall doing more then checking mine in situ with a multimeter, and resetting the galvometer needle suspension, (the bearings the needle rotates on).

The adjusting screw just moves the paper scale cardboard, so that the meters rest position is the black dot (I think).

First what seems to be wrong with each of you Kievs to hand apart from the one with a cracked potentiometer substrate? Fixing the easy one first will be the easiest...

Noel
I just had one of the meters fail so I understand your problems.l
Noel,

Two things: First, the variable resistor is just that, a variable reisistor; it's actually not a potentiometer. Pots have 3 connections. That's not being picky, the principle and use is different.

Second: The Kiev's variable reisistor shunts the cell current away from the meter and reduces it. Be careful measuring the voltage produced by the cell - unless it's loaded by the resisitor and meter coils the voltage will be almost constant regardless of lighting and cell condition (unless it's absolutely expired). A modern DMM places negligible load on the cell and will not give an indication of capability.
 
Wolves

Thanks for your comments.

My multimeter is a cheap galvo lots of internal resistance.

I've seen cells that gave no output so the suggested test would weed those out, if you get any output then as you suggest you need to try loaded with fixed resistor and variable to see if you can get a linear (or log) reading in bight and dim lighting conditions. Frequently it has been debris on the cell output pads, (not with a kiev), which produced the zero output.

Modern cells may be much better than origonals and may need different fixed resistors I had planned on using a variable, to make calibration more practical.

Are you going to provide a calibration procedure perhaps? We could do with one.

Noel
 
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