I Seen It

Yep. Thar it was. I seen it. Right thar in Plaza Arcade in 1968.

A woman brought a Kodak Instamatic camera in - just a basic sort of model - with the Kodak 126 cartridge inserted in the back the wrong way round - the left side on the right side. Those of you who have seen a 126-Instamatic cartridge know that this is impossible, but that did not stop her.

Then there was the Canon 318 movie camera that was dropped of the side of a boat into salt water. The person who brought it into the shop a fortnight later was philosophical about it and bought a new one and told us to throw the old one away.

For some reason it got forgotten in a back cupboard for about a year. When we hauled it out the plastic parts of it were untouched, but the aluminium parts of the casing and internal works had literally disappeared into dust. A memento mori if ever there was one...

Today a client brought a camera in with a wireless transmitter attached to the hot shoe on top. But the wrong way around - meaning that the shooter's eye could not be brought to the eyepiece. Unfortunately it was also jammed tight there...an awkward situation.

For my own part I have managed do the one thing with a classic film camera that would render the negatives produced by it unusable - I got in the habit of flicking the lens assembly of a Plaubel Makina 67 in and out rapidly to shoot. Which sucked the film forward from the film plane and rendered one side of all the negatives out of focus. And the subjects were unrepeatable...so that I have a record only of foolish failure.

And then there was the time that I made an entire slide show for a social group comprising 18 years of their negatives and files scanned into the computer for showing at their big celebration. I pressed one button on the computer and wiped 18 years out - before the show...

I must look out my copy of Erasmus' " Praise Of Folly " to see if I can pick up a few technical hints.

Uncle Dick