# Replacement Invercone for Weston Master II light meter?



## oldfilm (Apr 2, 2009)

I have a great old Weston Master II light meter from the 40s, still works great, but I want an invercone to use it as an incident meter for more accurate readings...  It didn't come with the invercone, can I just make one out of something or do I have to try and find an old or NOS one on ebay?  I saw one on ebay, but after shipping from England, it cost like 3x what I paid for the light meter...

Thanks!

-Steve


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## oldfilm (Apr 2, 2009)

Maybe I'll try making one out of a ping pong ball...


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## compur (Apr 2, 2009)

Sounds good to me.


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## oldfilm (Apr 3, 2009)

Success!  I got a $3 pack of 6 ping pong balls, cut one neatly in half with a very sharp knife- left with one side without logo, pretty clean.

The amazing part is that it fits and stays in the light meter with zero modification or jerry-rigging.  It fits and stays with the baffle open or shut for both the low and high light settings- even simpler than the two-piece invercone made for this model!

I'm going to take it out to shoot now, I hope this makes a dandy incident meter!


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## Mike_E (Apr 3, 2009)

Great!  I've got one of these too.  As long as it's consistent (and doesn't eat too much light in the low setting) you should be able to compensate.


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## oldfilm (Apr 3, 2009)

It didn't work too well, I was shooting in a museum type setting with very little ambient light... I went for long exposures and crossed my fingers!  It seems to do just fine for general outdoor purposes, though... (Check My most recent Flickr set ), most all of them came out pretty awesome I thought (all with reflective metering, maybe a couple with the TTL...


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## RyanLilly (Apr 3, 2009)

Do you have a picture of it? I just picked up a Weston master II and can't quite picture how that worked with the baffle closed.

Thanks.


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## oldfilm (Apr 3, 2009)

RyanLilly said:


> Do you have a picture of it? I just picked up a Weston master II and can't quite picture how that worked with the baffle closed.
> 
> Thanks.



1/2 ping pong ball, sliced neatly.  It fits and stays with the baffle open or closed.  I don't have a digicam handy, sorry...  Trust me, it fits.  I'm not sure if it blocks out too much light, I'll need to shoot more outdoors with it to see.  But it does fit.  My Weston Master II seems to work just great outdoors, but doesn't read much of anything in low-light situations.  I did calibrate the needle to zero (hold your hand over the back and make sure the needle is at zero- the screw for this adjustment is on the center of the back of the meter).


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## Mike_E (Apr 3, 2009)

You could try cutting slits in it to compensate for the lost light.  Just a thought.


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## RyanLilly (Apr 4, 2009)

Cool, I might Give that a try. My weston is pretty dead on accurate compared to metering with my 20D, so I can try come comparisons with each.


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## oldfilm (Apr 6, 2009)

RyanLilly said:


> Cool, I might Give that a try. My weston is pretty dead on accurate compared to metering with my 20D, so I can try come comparisons with each.



Which model is it?  Mine's a II.  I know the later models in the master series have a slightly different size invercone, but for the price of a ping pong ball, I say go for it!


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## RyanLilly (Apr 6, 2009)

I think I have some ping pong balls rolling around work anyway, so I'll give it a shot If I find one.

Thanks


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## oldfilm (Apr 9, 2009)

Ryan, I just won an ebay auction for an old 2-piece invercone that fits my Weston Master II meter... I will try it out against the ping pong ball and report back how it fares.  It's a weird design because you open the baffle to use it, but it has its own smaller baffle to use the high light setting- so the ping pong ball with the regular baffle open or closed is a bit simpler.  For $11, I couldn't pass it up...


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## RyanLilly (Apr 9, 2009)

oldfilm said:


> Ryan, I just won an ebay auction for an old 2-piece invercone that fits my Weston Master II meter... I will try it out against the ping pong ball and report back how it fares.  It's a weird design because you open the baffle to use it, but it has its own smaller baffle to use the high light setting- so the ping pong ball with the regular baffle open or closed is a bit simpler.  For $11, I couldn't pass it up...



Thanks I appreciate it. I haven't even been able to use mine yet. Hopefully I'll have a chance to burn through a roll of film in my recently acquired yachica TLR this weekend, and see how everything goes. :mrgreen:


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