Pentax digital spotmeter battery drain?

[Joe O'Hara]

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.

[MrFujicaman]

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.

[Paul Ron]

which type of batteries are you using?

the different pentax spot meters have different battery setups.

[LabRat]

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

[Drew Wiley]

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.

[Sal Santamaura]

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

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

[Conrad . Marvin]

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

[Alan Klein]

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.

[Drew Wiley]

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.