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on Mar 18, 2021 23:27:47 GMT
Posted: Mar 18, 2021 23:27:47 GMT
Hi first time poster and new photographer asking for wisdom. I purchased my first ever camera last week and it is the yashica FX-7. A thing of beauty in my eyes  I shot my first roll using a light meter app and the images came out with acceptable exposure. The light meter on the camera seems to be faulty though. It reads under-exposed (-) on all SS including B. With the exception on 1 second, which it reads over-exposed (+). This is regardless of light around me. When SS is set to 1 second in total darkness it will still read over-exposed (+). I have tried adjusting the ISO as explained here (https://yashica.boards.net/thread/770/yashica-fx-3-metering-problem) but it does not make a difference. Just to be clear, it will never display a correct exposure reading ie green light. Any ideas what it could be? If the repair requires me to take it apart, I am happy to do so. I have the manual and service manual, yet I can't seem to diagnose the problem. My shutter speeds are slightly out, some more than others, but this is expected with such an old camera. Not too sure if that is causing this issue or not. Thanks in advance everyone. A |
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on Mar 19, 2021 3:00:04 GMT
Posted: Mar 19, 2021 3:00:04 GMT
Welcome to the forum, aaronl ... It's good to know that the first roll turned out with acceptable results. The good news is that no matter what issues might be lurking in the meter, with it's mechanical shutter it won't depend on battery power to continue working. The caveat being that calculating exposures needs to be done outside the camera. You referenced another thread about meter issues, but I get the impression that those same suggestions may not apply equally here. If the metering is wrong, but is always consistantly wrong by the same amount, it's sometimes possible to 'rig' the camera to compensate for that difference. It sounds like your body's metering circuit will activate, but never calculate, and would likely need a total replacement. The circuit parts aren't usually available as NOS items, so you'd need to find a mechanically non-working donor body with a known good meter system to pull parts from. Unfortunately it's often far easier and cheaper, and with far less time and effort - to find a functional replacement body. Prices these days for working models are too low to make repairs practical. There are a sufficient number of FX models of all types to be had, and with your current setup, you can take your time. For instance... a working FX-D (for $15 USD) with a 180 day warranty. It will need a new cover, and probably new light seals, but they are waaay simpler to do than replace a meter circuit. |
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on Mar 19, 2021 13:50:12 GMT
Posted: Mar 19, 2021 13:50:12 GMT
Welcome to the forum, aaronl ... It's good to know that the first roll turned out with acceptable results. The good news is that no matter what issues might be lurking in the meter, with it's mechanical shutter it won't depend on battery power to continue working. The caveat being that calculating exposures needs to be done outside the camera. You referenced another thread about meter issues, but I get the impression that those same suggestions may not apply equally here. If the metering is wrong, but is always consistantly wrong by the same amount, it's sometimes possible to 'rig' the camera to compensate for that difference. It sounds like your body's metering circuit will activate, but never calculate, and would likely need a total replacement. The circuit parts aren't usually available as NOS items, so you'd need to find a mechanically non-working donor body with a known good meter system to pull parts from. Unfortunately it's often far easier and cheaper, and with far less time and effort - to find a functional replacement body. Prices these days for working models are too low to make repairs practical. There are a sufficient number of FX models of all types to be had, and with your current setup, you can take your time. For instance... a working FX-D (for $15 USD) with a 180 day warranty. It will need a new cover, and probably new light seals, but they are waaay simpler to do than replace a meter circuit.
Thank you for getting back to me. After more experiment with the camera, I have noticed that the meter will read over-exposed when SS@1s & ISO@200. If I change a stop on SS@1/2s and ISO@400 it reads over-exposed. If I change either setting another stop in either direction it reads under-exposed. So there seems to be a pattern emerging. I will look into 'rigging' the camera to compensate, although you make a valid point about the camera being fully mech thus this issue is not going to affect me too much. To be honest I have quite liked having to meter the shot using a 3rd party, it may be the longer way of doing things, but it is helping me to learn faster. Eventually I want the ability to meter the light myself and having to take the time to meter with my phone (which I also record the metadata in for revisiting the images to learn from mistakes) seems to be helping me store the knowledge of different environments and exposures. Thanks for taking the time to help. I will certainly look into it further just out of curiosity. I’ll keep my eye out for a new body, but they are quite hard to come by, especially at the price you linked here in the UK. 
Best
A
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on Mar 19, 2021 19:19:58 GMT
Posted: Mar 19, 2021 19:19:58 GMT
Forgive me if I'm oversimplifying, as I don't know how familiar you might be with metering in general. Exposure systems have a very distinct set of rules on the 3 values they use - 2 are variables and 1 is a constant. Time (shutter speed) and light volume (aperture) are variables, and film sensitivity (ISO) is the constant. Once the ISO is set, there's a sliding window of time and aperture values that will provide for correct exposure, but the balance of each one is never independent. Think of the time and aperture values as 2 ends of a rigid teeter-totter, and if you raise one value, you lower the other by an equal amount. The ISO is the fulcrum point, and once set, it generally shouldn't be changed until the roll is finished.
Film is developed without regard to what exposure settings were used for each frame. A darkroom tech (or a user processing their own film) will use only one method of timing and it's agitation method for the entire roll, so there needs to be a consistancy in what calculations get used at the time of exposure. If the pattern you recognize when getting the meter to respond is not strictly linear in the readouts presented for the base ISO you've set... it's not a reliable calculation to be trusted, and no amount of fiddling is likely to give you good results in exposures.
And... Your observation on learning while using an additional tool is familiar to those of us who started with film and 'manual everything' cameras, and it easily gets lost in the run towards more automation and full-auto everything with digital. There's more than one lesson in that tid-bit alone.
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