MetroLux and Deliveries, Sept 2007

The Folks at Metered Light are in the process of deciding whether to make more MetroLux (or is it MetroLuxes, MetroLii, MetroLumens, I don't know). Obviously, there in not a huge demand for darkroom equipment these days. We would hate to leave anybody without a MetroLux if they wanted one. Yet, we cannot stockpile a bunch of them in our closet waiting for the last customer to roll in. There are presently enough units to fill orders and there are a couple units left for lucky customers. What will happen after this is uncertain. It has come up quickly and there are feelings at Metered Light that we should give more notice before we pull the plug production.

Regardless, I don't believe the Remote Sensor will be made anymore and none is available.

MetroLux II, How the Memory Works, Problem & Fix

I'll probably put this a couple of places here. I just repaired a MetroLux II for a customer. It had a voltage problem, something we have seen on a couple of units. Not hard to fix. Then I sent it back and that problem was fixed, but the customer questioned the memory. It was giving strange numbers, changing on its own, and the beeper was beeping at the wrong interval. Very odd. Everything else seemed to work.

First thing to know is that the memory can be completely re-initialized by turning on MetroLux while holding SETUP button down. This will load a series of numbers into LUX, TIME, Cal#, etc. They should be 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 100%, 2.1, 2.2, etc. The second thing to know is that the re-initialize is not complete until you hit EXPOSE the first time. This is true anytime you change any numbers that resided in memory: they are not written to memory until you hit EXPOSE once. Doing this can clear a number of apparently unrelated problems.

Tip for printing with a MetroLux II

I was printing yesterday and noticed all my times seemed funny. Turned out, I was printing with Lux 2 and I usually use Lux 1. On my unit, those have different calibration numbers, but they don't need to because I only use one light source. I'm going to change the Lux 1 and Lux 2 calibration numbers to be the same so that it doesn't matter.

A Happy MetroLux II

MetroLux Sensor installation in a Beseler Condenser Head

A little hard to see, but there are 5 little holes drill in the housing beside the top of the lamp. One hole where the probe sees through is 1/4" and the other 4, or 2 pairs, are 1/8" provide attachment of nylon ties to strain relief the probe wire.

MetroLux Sensor installation in a 12x12 grid

Here you can see the photo diode looking down on the grid (between grids) on a 12x12. On the other side, stickies, nylon ties, and epoxy hold everything in place.

MetroLux, Very Early, Update

I recently had a MetroLux (One) come in for repair. It was a very early serial number, the 26th in production. There were issues with reset and the unit seemed to operate very slowly. All other functions performed. We don't get many MetroLuxes (MetroLuxi ?) for repair, they just don't break and I had never seen this before. As bad luck will have it, the percent function had 00 loaded. Don't know how that is possible, but when it happens all bets are off. Restoring this fixed the unit. I discovered that very early ML had no reset, we loaded new units with all the numbers by hand. And finally, the Custom Code Numbers were from 0 - 127, with most of them acting as duplicates.

Bottom line is that if you have a very early unit, you can tell by the Custom Code Number range of 0 - 127. In this case, you have no reset. A good CCN is about 23. See the Q & A and instructions for updates.