Originally posted by Silent Street 
Not so much "user error" as the limitations of what essentially is a rudimentary meter, particularly so on the 6x7 and 67, meters which do degrade over time, to a lesser extent, true also of the 67II. The majority of exposure problems I see are from stray light entering the eyepiece when the camera is used away from the eye — that photographers should then blame the camera for this is quite comical. It's a quite sensitive meter. The provision of an eyecup works wonders for the old 6x7 and 67 bodies, which will take Nikon F100 eyepiece correction lenses and eyecups, additional to those available on the aftermarket.
It's physically impossible for any exposure problems on a P67 or P6x7 to be caused by stray light entering the viewfinder during exposure, as they do not even have autoexposure. You would have to be holding it away from your face yet looking into the finder to see the needle while you adjust the exposure, which is quite impossible.
Not understanding your meter's pattern is most certainly user error. I bag on the meter for being rudimentary all the time, but the primary implication of that is that you need to be really sure you don't leave the meter on because it draws orders of magnitude more power than the body itself and will flatten a battery within 24 hours (ask me how I know this).
CdS meters are perfectly accurate if in proper calibration (I've never seen one drift either), the only real improvement has been faster response time and better low-light performance from Silicon Blue-type cells. I actually prefer averaging meters to fancy matrix meters on my film cameras. There's no way to tell how exactly the camera is interpreting a scene so you don't know when you need to override it.
Post #30 by tuco
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