Shooting on film always has it's challenges. I have a beautiful little Pentax ME Super 35mm camera that is an absolute joy to handle. Nice as it is I recently decided I'd sell it as I have about 20 film cameras and there is a certain amount of pressure being applied by my loving wife to clear the decks a little.
And so as I was listing the camera on eBay i gave it one last check to make sure it was all working and low and behold I took one shot and the mirror promptly stuck and refused to flip down. I tried this and that and couldn't get it to work so I put the listing up on eBay, selling for very cheap as "spares and repairs" and described the problem I had with it. Now photographers are a notoriously friendly and helpful lot and a day or two later I got a message from a photographer in Portugal who said he'd had the same problem with an ME Super that he had owned and described a fix. And wouldn't you know it, it worked. The mirror returned to it's rightful position and it appeared to work again.
I didn't want to list it again without putting a roll of film through it to make sure it all worked as it should so on a recent trip to the Natural History Museum in London I loaded it up with some B&W film and snapped away, shooting the whole roll. Well, I sent it off to be developed and disappointingly when the scans came back they were virtually all horribly underexposed. So now I find that the meter isn't working properly. C'est la vie (this time it really will be listed as "Spares and repairs". :)
All of that brings me to this picture and the concept of "happy accidents" which I've alluded to before. This grainy shot of the exterior of the museum building was probably 2 or 3 stops underexposed but there is something about the look of it that I absolutely love. I can't explain it but view it full screen on your computer screen and tell me I'm wrong. So for me at least, a happy accident.
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