[Leica] Mercury battery solution for M5, Leicaflex, etc.??

[wrs111445 at yahoo.com (Bill Smith)]

My solution was to buy an exposure meter. 

John Collier <jbcollier@shaw.ca> wrote:Silver 1.5v cells have a similar 
voltage stability over their useful 
life as mercury cells. You are right that alkaline cells are a poor 
choice.

John Collier

On 7-Oct-05, at 7:40 AM, Simon PJ wrote:

> Thanks for this information, Didier.
>
> I vaguely remember a potential problem to do with the voltage 
> stability of
> alkaline batteries compared to the mercury batteries: that the mercury
> batteries retain a relatively steady voltage until they fail, while 
> the
> alkaline batteries are constantly reducing in voltage. Presumably 
> this is
> something that the meter electronics have to be able to compensate 
> for, and
> may be a potential problem for the M5, Leicaflex, etc. in which the 
> meter
> circuits were designed to deal with a constant 1.35V
>
> It's quite likely that I have remembered this wrongly, and invented 
> the
> problem!
>
>
> On 7/10/05 12:40 pm, "Didier Ludwig" 
> wrote:
>
>
>> All "new" mercury batteries I had went down after a short time. 
>> The best is to
>> modify the camera's battery tray from 1.35V to 1.5V for the newer 
>> alkaline
>> batteries (there are some in the PX625 size). The job is to solder 
>> a little
>> electric resistance module that reduces the voltage for 0.15V. I 
>> had let this
>> done with a Konica Auto-S3 and a Rollei XF 35, for CHF20 ($16 or 
>> ?9) each
>> camera. Before that I had used the 1.5V batteries and corrected it 
>> with the
>> ISO setting (don't remember how much, I had compared it to my M6's
>> lightmeter).
>>
>> Weincell has alternative 1.35V mercury-free batteries, but they 
>> are quite
>> expensive.
>>
>>> Is it still possible to get hold of 'fresh' mercury batteries for 
>>> the
>>> cameras?


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