I recently bought an 'Elicar' digital spotmeter, which appears identical to the one sold by Soligor.
It seems to agree fairly well, on average, with the TTL meters in my Nikons and with a Minolta auto-meter 3, except that it seems excessively sensitive to the red end of the spectrum.
Have any other users of the Soligor or Elicar meter noticed this; and has it ever proved to be a problem in actual use?
The meter seems to have a comprehensive array of adjustment pots, hidden under the brand label, and I'm sure that a filter pack could be added to it, and the sensitivity wound up, a la Zone VI, if necessary.
But if nobody else has noticed any error, then I won't bother to try and modify it.
Thanks in advance.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), October 09, 2001

Answers

Pete, one thing you might want to watch with these is an apparent sensitivity to the high voltage of a new 9-volt battery. Both of mine will read two-thirds to a stop low with a fresh battery. Once the voltage gets to 9 or below, they will read accurately - well, at least they will be within one-third stop of my Pentax meters. By the way, all of my Pentax meters, from the old smokestack 3 degree to the analogs and the digitals, agree with each other. The Soligors seem a bit flakey in comparison.

-- Chauncey Walden (CLWalden@att.net), October 09, 2001.

Thanks Chauncey. The battery that came with it now needs replacing. I'll look for a difference in the reading when I put the new battery in. Cheers.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), October 09, 2001.

Pete, I have also noticed an increased sensitivity to red on my old Soligor, which I keep as a back-up meter. It is not much of a problem, however, unless you are metering a very saturated red or metering through a red filter. If you have meters to compare with, you could come up with a "fudge factor" of sorts for these situations, or avoid metering the red parts of the scene. My meter is only about 1/3 to 2/3 of a stop more sensitive to red at its worst. Regards, ;^D)

-- Doremus Scudder (ScudderLandreth@compuserve.com), October 10, 2001.