[Les Sarile]

I prefer that my cameras don't try for an exposure that is beyond its metering capability. I always do long exposure on manual. First long exposure generally mean low light and if the light is below the metering range I don't trust it.

I believe this is true - at least for my FE2, FA, F3 & FM3A, as I have gotten as low as 15minutes to as much as >1hour unpredictably.

This is not the case with both of my Pentax LX bodies as they time reasonable similar even though the manual does state only 125 seconds at f1.2.