Pentax digital spotmeter battery drain?

A quick question to those of you who use the Pentax Digital spotmeter.

Situation: I have put a fresh (or at least newly bought) battery (from a well known brand) maybe two or three weeks ago, today went out shooting, found that the meter was dead. Luckily had a spare in my bag, so was able to proceed, but I became slightly worried - is there something wrong with the meter? The previous battery lasted many months...

Is such quick drain common? Or was it just that I must have pushed the trigger somehow when packing the meter so that it was "on" the whole time? (That was the only possible explanation that occurred to me.)
Is there a way to "switch" the whole meter off?

Any tips and tricks would be most welcome.

Thanks!

Battery drain when the meter is off is nil (or close to it). I've never had a battery go flat before I went and changed it because it was 5+ years old.

It could be a defective battery, or, as you say, the meter somehow got stored with pressure on the trigger switch. Last of all, I would suspect a problem with the meter.

Ditto. I've had batteries last an entire decade of use. Check for any corrosion inside the battery hole. Always have a fresh spare battery on hand just in case. Don't assume every newly-purchased battery is good.

Same here. My Z6 Digital has had the same battery for 10+ years or so

Sometimes it's something as simple as some condensation preventing proper contact. This is the time of year where it's likely to happen, since the humidity can still be high and the temperature can vary widely. Try wiping off the battery contacts and the meter contacts, and reinstalling the battery to see if it works. Better yet, check the battery voltage with a multimeter to see if the battery really is drained. If the voltage is well below normal, then you really might have a problem with the meter or the battery.

Loss of contact due to condensation is very common in battery powered devices that are used outside. Thankfully, it just needs a quick removal and wipe down to get things working again.

Thanks everyone for your input - the idea of condensation did not occur to me, but that might be the case.
Having learned the "hard way" some time ago I always carry a spare (or two) nowadays. Taking Drew's point I will try to carry two different brands of battery in the future :)

Hello to all, I have one question about Pentax digital spot meter.
I've just got one used, that seems to work ok.
I've tryed to compare meterings with my own Sekonic L508 and the Pentax digital it's 3, 4 Ev higher then then Sekonic, obviously same iso and same reading place.
Is that normal, or happen to you also? Or the Pentax maybe have something wrong...?
Thanks a lot for the help!
Best
Ivan

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ivangenasiphotography

Hello to all, I have one question about Pentax digital spot meter.
I've just got one used, that seems to work ok.
I've tryed to compare meterings with my own Sekonic L508 and the Pentax digital it's 3, 4 Ev higher then then Sekonic, obviously same iso and same reading place.
Is that normal, or happen to you also? Or the Pentax maybe have something wrong...?
Thanks a lot for the help!
Best
Ivan

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I compared my Pentax with my sekonic after the Pentax was calibrated. Both read the same.


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I have used my battery for so long that the spare was almost outdated. Then I worried that I wouldn’t be able to get another. So I bought two again…

Quote:

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Originally Posted by nbagno

I compared my Pentax with my sekonic after the Pentax was calibrated. Both read the same.

Thank you, where you calibrate your pentax? Is a operation that a camera repair can do?
Thanks
Ivan

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I've done the "pack the meter with the trigger pressed" trick a time or two myself. I carry a spare battery, and give how I stuff the meter into the backpack a bit of attention when I put it away.

Defective batteries happen. I once bought a 24 pack of AA cells to power my Agfatronic 643CS for a wedding. I got to the wedding and the flash wouldn't work. When I got home, I tested the batteries-all of them read about a 10th of a volt. Now these were new, sealed in the package batteries! I tested the rest of the package-same thing.

which type of batteries are you using?

the different pentax spot meters have different battery setups.

With mine, a new lithium battery, even with very frequent use lasts more than several years normally, so not an issue... If an issue, something is wrong with it...

They take a slightly odd battery that might have sat on a shelf too long somewhere else, so assume new is possibly "old"...

For the poster asking about different readings from 2 different meters, one of them is out of calibration and need to be checked... If the Pentax, Ritter used to work on them, and Pentax in Colorado probably still service them...

Steve K

I've had a habit over the decades of keeping a brand new almost unused Pentax digital spotmeter in reserve, not only if my others eventually wear out, but as a master reference to compare the others to (stored without battery to keep it pristine). All my Pentax and Minolta spotmeters read identically new (I no longer have any Minolta). Then, checking my user meters about once a year, if there was any discrepancy over the entire range, I'd get that one serviced (recalibrated). For me, even under constant use, it takes about a decade for one of these to drift even a third of a stop. But like any kind of battery-dependent item, it's important to remove the battery if you're going to store it away quite awhile, in order to prevent risk of corrosion from a leaky aging battery. But in use, the Varta silver oxide and Duracell alkaline batteries I buy seem to last me about a decade too, in these meters.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LabRat

With mine, a new lithium battery, even with very frequent use lasts more than several years normally...

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Lasts, perhaps, but does not give consistent readings over time. It's been more than two decades since I pointed that out:

https://www.largeformatphotography.i...ll=1#post14945

I have not noticed that the meter reads differently over time with a lithium battery …..but then again, maybe I should pay more attention.

I have the same problem with my Minolta Autometer IIIf. They claimed it wouldn't drain the battery. Wrong! So I take the battery out when not using it. Their next Model IV came with a power on-off switch.

I already noted how I keep on hand several Pentax spotmeters, and drift at all was uncommon. 1/3 EV every ten years maybe, and the only current one with even that tiny amount of error is because it was once dropped under water and got little bit of fog stain permanently inside the lens (easily corrected for). And the ones in storage didn't drift at all. One of my meters is over 40 years old and so heavily used that it is taped together - but it still reads correctly over the entire range! It has been internally cleaned and recalibrated twice by Quality Light Metric over that time, but was never off more than 1/3.