ESII meter behaviour

I have just got my ESII back but the meter isn't behaving as I would expect. When one presses the shutter button the meter needle drops then slowly rises back up to 1000. Changing the aperture have no impact on the needle.

My first thought was the batteries so I swapped them for the set in my ME-F (as I don't have any absolutely new batteries) but I get the same thing.

Is this likely to be a battery issue or is the camera malfunctioning?

Many thanks, Kris.

It sounds like a malfunction. does the ES use only auto setting lenses. It might be worth checking the lens is functioning properly.

I tried two different SMC Tak lenses both of which work fine on my ES so I don't think it is that. Thanks for the suggestion though.

K.

Could the camera be set to read battery power? I can't remember the exact procedure, but it might involve setting the camera to B and ASA100.

ESII has a battery check button next to the ASA/ISO rewind knob (needle should sit at the midpoint if batteries are ok), the old spotmatics were the ones you set to 'B' to check the battery level.

needle rising at the half press does sound like a fault to me, as if some capacitor in circuit is charging/discharging on the button push.

I have put an absolutely fresh set of batteries in and it now seems to be working fine. According to the manual the batteries should last about a year and so if there is an unusual battery drain it should show up fairly soon. Fingers crossed!

I'm looking forward to giving the ESII a try out. It has a very swish "viewfinder blind" feature so that you can use it on a tripod etc. without light from behind upsetting the automatic exposure.

Best wishes, Kris.

Lovely camera Kris - I gave the ES to my daughter but the 11 stays with daddy............................

Tony

Don't forget that you can buy Alkaline and Silver batteries. I never bother with alkaline you can get silver quite cheap on ebay. Renata are quite good. It might even take Lithiums if one's on to of the other.

The Lithiums actually came out as a cheaper alternative to silver, but cost more now days.

These cameras are not really suitable for Lithium batteries. Even as late as the MX we were warned not to use Lithium.

They (3v Lithiums) came out around 1978/79 when the price of silver had shot up, so it was later than most of the Pentax cameras. I always thought they were introduced as a straight substitute. The ES took a 6v Silver PX28 which had a Lithium equivalent. I can't remember anyone saying it couldn't be used.

It seems the ESII takes 4 separate batteries so Lithiums aren't usable anyway. But they should be SILVER!

The MEF came out about 4 years later and I bought one an I was surprised that it said in the manual that Lithiums couldn't be used, possibly because of the batteries in the lens as well.

The Super-A manual says that they (Lithiums)can be used in that camera.

Oddly the ME-Super came with silver batteries, but the MX came with alkalines.

Sorry got a bit confused there.... It was alkaline batteries in the camera body that weren't recommended, the lithiums wouldn't fit because the 4 batteries are kept separate.

The MX originally was supplied with Silver Oxide cells, but later with Alkaline , presumably as a cost reduction exercise.