>>2703035You're a butthole. Don't post lies anon.
>Selenium meters degrade with age. its a chemical degradation, you can't stop or reverse it.Correct.
>why they stopped making them and went to battery models in the 60's.Bullshit. They made them up till the 80ies when silicon cells became widespread, first of all. Secondly, "battery models" aka CdS photoresistive diodes were just a few (3-4?) orders of magnitude more sensitive to light changes than selenium cells would ever be and let you take readings in low light conditions where Se cells'd long stop indicating anything. Nothing to do with their longevity, just inferior tech.
>some will still respond to light even today, but are not at all accurate or usable.Again, bullshit. The degradation lowers light sensitivity, sure, but in a proportional (logarythmic rather, as far as details go) manner. Meaning, if you compensate by the x stops it's degraded by, they still work fine.
Admittedly, working fine for a very narrow set of lighting conditions is still useless.
Everything else you said is true and an old CdS lightmeter (look for ones made for modern 1,5V batteries (3/4.5 etc), unless equipped with basic google skills, a soldering iron and the intelligence and patience of a piece of damp toast avoid the 1.35V mercury battery-powered older ones) will last you forever and work in all imaginable lighting conditions you'll ever be in. Hoping selenium meters on old old rolleis still working might leave you disappointed. Even if it's entirely possible (and is done on a professional financially-fuelled basis) to repair/rejuvenate them by replacing the old cell to have a working meter again.
Sidenote, built-in non-TTL (through the lens) camera meters are always shit because they give you an average reading of the entire scene unless you literally hold them a feet away from something. Which is incredibly bad as you'll learn. CdS meters have a narrow field of view, some are even spot meters.
