Who are we?  Featured Cameras  Articles  Instruction Manuals  Repair Manuals  The Classic Camera Repair Forum  Books  View/Sign Guestbook

Pentax spotmatic F stopdown light met... Log in | Log Out | Topics | Search
Moderators | Register | Edit Profile

Classic Camera Repair » Archives-2007 » Pentax spotmatic F stopdown light meter problem « Previous Next »

Author Message
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Jdgraham
Tinkerer
Username: Jdgraham

Post Number: 1
Registered: 01-2007

Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!)

Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 12:48 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I recently bought a Pentax Spotmatic F to replace my old SPII that was stolen.
The light meter works fine when I have the SMC Takumar 1:1.4 50mm lens set to manual. According to the owners manual the lens is supposed to be set to auto. When I push the stop-down lever up (lens on auto) to do stop-down metering the needle goes straight up to the plus side of the light meter. The diaphram closes down to the aperture that is set, but for some reason the light meter reading is wonkey.
Is there somthing real simple that I am missing or is there a problem with the switch/cirduit?
the reason I know that the meter readings are acurate on the manual setting is because I checked it against my Canon S2 which has proven to be extremely accurate.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Paul_ron
Tinkerer
Username: Paul_ron

Post Number: 14
Registered: 07-2006

Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!)

Posted on Sunday, February 04, 2007 - 07:29 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only) Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I just looked at my old Spotmatic and confirmed the switches.

The lens is set to AUTO. The lens is always wide open. It will automatically stop down before taking a picture. OTOH If in MANUAL mode it will be stopped down all the time.

The body switch activates the meter and will stop down the lens so you can take an accurate reading. It also allows you to do a DOF preview of your image in the finder with the lens stopped down.

I hope this helps.

Add Your Message Here
Post:
Bold text Italics Underline Create a hyperlink Insert a clipart image

Username: Posting Information:
This is a private posting area. Only registered users and moderators may post messages here.
Password:
Options: Enable HTML code in message
Automatically activate URLs in message
Action:

Topics | Last Day | Last Week | Tree View | Search | User List | Help/Instructions | Program Credits Administration