Lens
Earlier this week I reactivated two of my 35mm compact cameras, the Rollei 35 T and the Olympus XA. Surprisingly, finding film and replacement batteries has gotten easier since the last time I looked. Both cameras appear to be in good working order. The meters function and the lenses aren't fogged. The proof will be running a film through them. The reasonably priced choice at the local photography outlet was Kodak 400ASA. I would have preferred a 100 colour or black-and-white.
The machines still feel great in the hand. I miss that mechanical click. (I recently updated to an Apple Magic Keyboard and am back to pounding it like a typewriter.) It took me a minute to remember how to remove the metal film back on the Rollei. Although I was anxious not to break the Olympus's moulded construction, the plastics have not corroded. You can use a pocket knife, a coin or even your thumbnail to unscrew the battery covers – how's that for right to repair? It took me a moment to recall how film is threaded on the take-up reel. Using the meter to bracket for depth of field came back to me straight away. I can recite Kodak's exposure tables, which is good because they're no longer printed on the back of the film box.
I was thinking about the cameras because film photography is central to a short story I'm working on – 'Osome', first published 2003, which I'm revising and formatting for a new ebook edition.
Printing a proof of the story was as arcane an exercise as refitting the 40-year-old cameras. After hauling the Canon out of cupboard storage (my writing office is space-poor) and locating and plugging in the awkwardly stiff leads, I updated the software (for a new OS) and installed a new ink cartridge (more expensive than a 35mm film roll, less reliable, and stocked by as few stores). Once the device was nursed through its start-up, including unnecessary print head align tests and one paper feed jam, the pages printed on the second attempt.
I bought the Rollei and the Olympus about 10 years ago for almost nothing, from camera stores in London. Both were cheap because the technology was on the way out but they've held up a lot better than my 24-month-old printer, not to mention all those old digital devices bumping around in the drawers.