New (old) toy

My newest camera arrived in the post today, fresh from a triumphant eBay auction that saw me get it for about one-third of the usual rate.

It's a Canon AE-1 Program 35mm SLR, and was introduced in 1981. This is actually my second model - I got my first in 1988 when I was at university. It was my introduction to SLR photography, and though I loved it I soon upgraded to the Canon A1 (a theme of fickleness which has continued ever since).

My new version is absolutely pristine - it looks like it's just been taken out of the box. It does, however, have the traditional 'cough' that Canon film cameras of this era often suffered from. I'm not sure why they call it a cough as it's more of a screech. For those unfamiliar with the sound, it's kind of like a cross between standing on a cat's tail and the shower scene from Psycho. It doesn't affect the pictures, though.

Of course, I couldn't wait to try it out, and the seller had helpfully loaded it with a roll of film. (Unhelpfully, he'd loaded 200ASA film, but set the camera to 400ASA, so everything ended up being one stop over-exposed.)

Anyway, a quick trip to Boots (who knew they still developed film?!) and an hour later I had a set of prints. Unfortunately, their negative scanner wasn't working, so I've had to use the very dodgy document scanner at work to scan the prints.

So, the extras are, most improbably, from 35mm film taken today. The first shot is of a mural on a wall in the city centre (if you're into shooting murals, there's really no better place than Belfast), while the second is a detail from City Hall (this was shot in colour and converted to mono).

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with my new/old toy. It's not exactly practical for everyday blip work - and would get hideously expensive too, if I was paying to develop a film every day. Perhaps I'll do a private analogue blip - load up a 36-exposure film at the start of the month, take one photo a day, and then develop the film at the end of the month with a picture a day. That might be fun...