I know it's two in a row here, but I 'm just curious....The meter in one of my M6 bodies went crazy this evening...At ISO 200, in a fairly dim room, I was getting an overexposure reading of 1/1000th at f/16. The only way I could get the meter to show under exposure at all was if I removed the lens and held my hand over the body. I tried replacing the battery, to no avail and this went on for about five minutes before I removed the roll of film from the camera and swung open the back door to inspect the inside. After I did that, the thing worked perfectly again. Was there likely something blocking one of the contacts from the film-speed dial that caused it or What? I've seen an F5 freak out before, but never this.

-- Tom Nutter (tmnphotos@erols.com), February 05, 2002

Answers

I had a similar situation a couple of weeks ago, Tom. Opening the back and brushing off the contacts seemed to fix the problem. I assume there was a bit of fuzz or something on one of the contacts. No problems since.

I've also noticed some strange behaviour with ISO changes and TTL flash use. Although I haven't narrowed it down totally, turning the meter off at the shutter speed dial, then changing the ISO setting or mounting the flash seems to avoid the metering system's confusion.

-- Ralph Barker (rbarker@pacbell.net), February 05, 2002.

In order to keep the meter working properly in M6 cameras you need to periodically clean and move all electrical contacts. Use a clean pencil eraser to clean your battery compartment contacts and the contacts between the back and the body. Also move the shutter speed dial and ISO dial back and forth through their full range of movement.

-- John Collier (jbcollier@powersurfr.com), February 05, 2002.

Also, there are contacts between the film door and the body that need to be kept clean. A little alcohol on a q-tip does the trick.

:-),

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), February 05, 2002.

Hi, all:

In electronic maintenance works many times people say about cleaning delicate contacts with a pencil eraser but in the long run it could degrade the equipment performance.

Sensitive pluggable and sliding electronic contacts in high quality equipment many times have been plated with highly conductive metals (even gold in some cases)and the extremely thin layer (some few molecules thick ! ) could be easily wiped off by an abrasive pencil eraser enthusiastically and/or repeatedly rubbed over them.

A piece of soft lint-less cloth lightly wetted with alcohol with the help of a small woden stick (a match . . .?)would be a safer option.

Regards. Take care . . .

-Iván

-- Iván Barrientos M (ingenieria@simltda.tie.cl), February 06, 2002.

As a former electronics tech, I agree with Ivan. An eraser is fine if there is a problem, but I wouldn't scrub the contacts for preventive maintenance.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), February 06, 2002.