The Future's Bright...

Chuffed with this.... 

A wee Olympus Pen EES-2 camera that I got in a job lot of auction cameras a couple of months back. The entire lot had a load of things in it, so it worked out at about £3.71 a camera, which from a 'selling on and making some profit for toys' point of view, well it was a winner.

Except the joy was tempered by realising the aperture blades were stuck, and the little red 'not enough light' flag and shutter block wasn't rising. I considered selling it spares or repair, which would still have made a tidy profit. Then determined to fix it myself, following one of a few YouTube videos on this exact issue.

In the end enough time passed, and I've been doing well enough with the pocket money aspect, that I decided I might just keep it, and so was justified in spending some of the profit on getting it professionally serviced and reskinned.

Sent last Thursday.
Serviced on Friday.
Sent back on Monday.
Arrived today.

And still probably only spent about 2/3rds of its actual value. 

I've got a roll of basic Fomapan 200 B&W film in just to make sure everything is as it should be, then might treat it to some colour. The reason for the B&W is I can just develop that easily at home, and I've got rolls in some other cameras to test before selling, so I can develop at the same time. Mind you, this is a half frame camera, so basically shoots portrait onto the 35mm film, meaning I get around 72 shots on a 36 shot roll, so it might take a little longer.

I might, in the coming days, Blip the Canon AE-1 I'm testing (I recently had a Canon AE-1 Program pass through my hands, which was such a nice camera to use, and so far it's more basic forebear is proving just as lovely); and the truly eccentric Vivitar Series 1 200mm F/3.5 Autofocus lens, that is on my dad's trusty old Pentax ME Super just now - the lens lot from the auction cost me £12.96 (with commission), the original box it came with has a sticker for £324 on it, from.... 1984. This was premium kit back in the day, and even if the autofocus is a bit wobbly, it definitely works, with either single spot focus, or continuous mode, and a button on the side and the top of the lens for that focus, so you can use it landscape or portrait. It's truly fun to use.

But possibly not as much fun as the little Olympus will be - auto selecting the aperture, and choosing between 1/40th or 1/200th on the shutter speed, driven by the selenium light meter around the lens (you can manually choose the aperture as well if you really want). All you really need to worry about is the rough focus distance.

(more cameras coming up for auction tomorrow that I have my eye on - getting better at spotting the bargains and potential).