WESTON MASTER II, MODEL 735 LIGHT METER

THE METER:

This is a real beautiful meter. It's heavy, it's features are unique and it has it's been well taken care of. When I first got it out of the box from eBay (for a whopping $2.25) the needle wouldn't move, it was sold as "working" so I freaked. For some reason I played with the zero screw on the back and if fired up! Obviously stuck so I may open it up to see if it needs to be cleaned. This meter is from 1945-1957 and at that time it cost $30. that's an average of $270 today.

It has a unique feature in that, it is calibrated for "Weston" numbers not ASA, so in order to set it for the film speed you're using you need either a chart or simple math. The formula is ASA x 0.08, so If your film is ASA 100, you set the meter to 80 (100x0.80) then just double that for ASA 200 or x4 for ASA 400 (80x4=320, or 400x0.08) either way it's pretty simple. And being from a time before the ASA standard was set in stone (Wikipedia Weston) it was a forefront, along with the General Electric scale to today's modern ASA (film) and ISO (digital)

I grew up using plastic, lightweight meters and never had a clue these heavy steel with heavy cast iron magnet meters were even around until I got interested a few months ago. This is even cooler than my General Electric Type PR-1, but not much.

FIXES:

Just a little Q-tip and Windex to clean the glass edges and some corners, other than that it hasn't got a scratch on it or anything, and the leather case looks pretty good too. I am totally blown away by how nice this meter is for just a couple bucks, or at any price for all that matters.

[Camera Home] [SLRs] [Rangefinders] [Viewfinders] [TLR] [Meters]