Old film slr question

R

ripper_shredder

Member
So i picked up an old Praktica ltl3 at a garage sale a couple days ago for $10. it came with a 50mm f1.8 and a flash so its pretty tight. I went to go buy some film for it today and realized that they dont make the type battery to power the light meter. It can still shoot fine its just that i cannot tell if my aperture and shutter speed settings will give me enough light without having to develop the film and see for myself. I have taken a dozen shots already and i am using a d3000 to base my settings on.

I am just wondering if anyone has any knowledge of old film slr's and if i could maybe replace the battery with maybe a different type. It would help instead of carrying around an other cam and doing test shots on that cam.
 
Youd need to find zinc air batteries in the proper voltage, since im pretty sure it doesnt have the proper circuitry to take higher voltage batteries. or just shoot meterless. familiarize yourself with the sunny 16 rule, tons of photographers back in the day shot meterless and survived fine. shoot print film since it has a little more margin for error, and youll learn more about photography than you ever would shooting on a fully metered digital body. youll probably go through a few rolls with a lot of duds at first while you learn how to meter properly in your head, but in the long run itll be helpful, even when shooting digital to help light tricky scenes.
 
You guys should look around on ebay for old gossens or something. I always hear of those going for cheap, as well as minolta meters. But analog meters ftw. Being able to see all possible shutter/aperture combos is nice. I've actually never used a digital one though, but I'm happy with the analog.
 
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