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     M Currie Rating: N/A |
A quick web search shows that there are silver-oxide and zinc-air "wein cell" replacements for this battery. Try Google for sources. If at all possible, I'd see if the silver-oxide one will work with either a recalibration of the meter (probably too expensive in this case), or compensating with the ASA(now ISO) setting. The Wein cell replacements, though they require no recalibration, are more expensive and not as long-lasting, so if you can make a silver-oxide cell work, you're better off. For compensating with the ASA dial, what you would need to do is either experiment with settings until you get good exposures, or find another, known accurate meter or camera-with-meter, and adjust until they agree. You could start with the "sunny 16" rule: in bright sun, exposure should be about f16 and the reciprocal of the film speed. so for example, using ISO 100 film, F16 at 1/125 would be about right. If, with your new batteries, you fudge the ASA dial until the meter shows that setting, you'll at least be close. If the camera has an older averaging type meter, your child will soon learn that she has to second-guess the reading in difficult lighting situations anyway, and a ball-park figure may be all she needs from it. There might be a third possibility depending on how and whether there's a battery test function on the camera. On some cameras, such as the Konica T3, the battery test function itself is dependent on the ASA setting, and it is easy to calibrate the meter for other batteries simply by adjusting the setting during the test. Some other cameras do not do it this way, though, so you'll probably have to experiment a bit. Another possibility, if you can't get the built-in meter to work well, is just to find a relatively inexpensive hand-held meter (not too hard to find on ebay, etc.). Less convenient, of course, but versatile, allows use with any camera, including meterless or broken ones. |