Light Meter malfunction during cordless flash mode.

[gong123321]

I have a sekonic L-508 and recently it has been malfunctioning when operating in cordless flash mode. When set to shutter priority mode, sometimes (it's happening more and more frequently) I'll get a reading of "00.0" for the aperture value. This is definitely a malfunction as I've tested it against other meters on set. If I move the meter closer to the strobe it gets a stronger blast and will read fine. However, it not getting a readable blast in the first place is not the issue as it would read "Er.u" (or something to that effect) for "error: exposure under" if that was so, and this happens even when other meters are giving readings as high as f8-11. It seems to have this problem most when the strobe is just above ambient but, especially recently, has been happening with greater margins of strobe-to-ambient levels. Has anyone experienced this before? Any idea what it might be? Would love to try and figure it out instead of sending it out and paying an arm and a leg to "maybe" get it fixed. I work as a photographer's assistant so it's kind of important that my meter is functioning..

 

[fotch]

Send it to the factory authorized repair center for an estimate.

 

[gong123321]

Quality Light and Metric here in Los Angeles is the best around and it's going to cost about $140. So, being the broke photo assistant that I am, I'm hoping to trouble shoot it myself. Not afraid to open it up and get my hands dirty if someone might have an idea of what the problem could be.

 

[chriscrawfordphoto]

Modern digital meters are all just a printed circuit board with chips on it. Not user serviceable, and even QLM will likely just put a whole new board in the old case. He did exactly that to my Minolta flash meter IV. Minolta repaired a minor fault in an Autometer IIIF many years ago the sale way, they basically gave me a brand new meter in my old meter's shell.

 

[rince]

I am sure you tried replacing the battery, didn't you? I had a similar issue with my l-358 a few months back, turned out to be a bad battery.