meet penny, and a long overdue thank you

Meet Penny*:



She and I have gotten off to a bit of a rocky start. I got the K1000 in the mail almost two weeks ago, took a cursory look at the manual, and set off. I had pretty low expectations to start with, since figuring out an SLR and shooting with film for the first time in years meant a big learning curve. But, hey, I was enthusiastic. So enthusiastic, in fact, that I shot five rolls of film over the next week. You see what's happening here, don't you?

Well, on Tuesday I dropped of two rolls of film to get processed (incidentally, I think only one, maybe two, places in my town still do film processing). I waited the three days, and went back on Thursday to pick up my photos. I was anxious to see how the rolls turned out and was eager to see if I got any good shots.

If you follow me on Twitter, you already know that those two rolls of film were blank. I was so upset. I hadn't been expecting perfection, but was disappointed that nothing had turned out. I didn't know if the camera wasn't advancing the film or if I'd loaded the film incorrectly. The shots I thought I'd taken were lost.

And for a moment I wanted to condemn film to a fiery hell.

Instead, I gave the shop two more rolls of film that I'd shot and the lovely woman told me to check in the next day to see if they turned out. Yesterday after work I went back, holding on to a sliver of hope that something would have worked out. Not surprisingly, they were blank as well.

In the mean time, after the first two rolls, I did some googling on the K1000 and loading film (something I should have done from the beginning, evidently). I really hoped that the blank films were a result of my own stupidity and not some problem with the camera. Being out $20 or so on film, while still frustrating, would be way better than being out the $90 I spent on the camera. So, after said googling and YouTube watching, I'm 97% sure that I loaded the film incorrectly. It wasn't clear to me earlier that the leader end of the film has to go in the slit on the right hand side. Doh.

So, I reloaded the camera (correctly this time, I think) and shot through a roll to see what would happen. After wasting five rolls of film, I figured what's one more if it helps me figure out for sure what I'm doing right and wrong. After shooting the full film (it actually stopped when it was supposed to), before rewinding, I opened the back (I didn't care about these shots, I was more concerned with making sure the film had advanced). Miracle of miracles, the film had advanced and wound properly. Then I rewound the film, which also worked. Hooray!

Now that I've conquered the film loading issue, I'm going to put a new roll in and shoot it properly. At least now I'll know if it turns out blank there's also an issue with the camera. But fingers crossed that the blankness was all my fault.

Penny, can we please be friends?

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I also wanted to say a proper thank you to the lovely and generous Anjali. After listening to me moan daydream about wanting an SLR, she sent me the kick-ass squirrel camera strap (seen in the photo above) and a nudge towards getting a DSLR. It's going to take me a while to save up for the DSLR, but after a few months of stalking eBay, I found a Pentax K1000 that I think will be a great introduction to the world of SLRs. And now that I hopefully have the film issue sorted out, I'm ready to have fun. Thanks Anjali!

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*Very original name, huh? It also makes me think of this Penny, too, which is kind of awesome.