I recently went to Blackpool to see some friends at the Hive Gallery. They are having a photo event this month called Photo Pool. Some of my photos are being exhibited and one of my photos has been made into a poster and displayed on a tram stop.

It is pretty awesome to see your photo printed that large and on full public display. The event is still on until the end of the month so if you are in the area go down and take a look. There are lots of amazing photos and a few talks still happening. Plus you can wander or ride up and down the tram line to see the tram stops take over.

They are running some photowalks, I went on one when I was looking for my tram photo. I had also gone to put some film cameras in the gallery cabinets. They are for sale, but I ‘borrowed’ a Minolta X-300 for the walk. The Hive people had film for sale, Kentmere 400. For £10 you got the film, the walk, developing and an introduction to printing at the local community darkroom. I actually didn’t have any intention of buying one as I can develop my own, but I forgot all my film so it was that or nothing 🙂

We wandered around the North Pier and along the front, I seem to have been obsessed with the pier’s wooden walkway. Here are some of my results.

When we got back to the gallery, the gentleman with the ‘tower hat’ gave me a camera he got for £1, yeap one pound. It was a canonet. He said, for that price he could not leave it and decided to give it to me to see if I could spruce it up.

This camera seems to follow me around. The first one I had was a bit fungus-y and I cleaned it. I was super proud as it was the first time I had done that. Besides that, I just didn’t gel with it so I sent it to a friend, who sent it back refurbished. I gave that to one of the Hive organisers who absolutely loved it.

The light meter did not work on this one, but that wasn’t an issue as the camera could work in manual mode. The main issue was the jammed shutter and aperture blades. Nothing on the blade front was moving. I unscrewed the front and back elements to gain access to them. They were fully stuck together. I had to carefully lift one blade with a sharp tweezer to get any movement at all which was quite stiff.

My plan of attack, without a full dismantle which I can’t do, was to alternate flushing with naptha and then isopropyl. I wanted to try and get some movement. I did this over and over, trying to activate the shutter, letting the liquids evaporate, then trying again. After the first two times, the shutter started to work effectively each time without resticking. The aperture blades were an different story. They would respond and open, turn with the dial selector, but then rejam. So I just kept going, flushing alternately and turning the dial repeatedly at various times over two days. Then I left it for a day to let everything fully evaporate.

When I returned to the camera, the shutter and aperture blades were working as they should and not rejamming.

At that point, I cleaned the lenses and put it all back together. I didn’t want to add the lenses without being sure the liquids had evaporated and mist the inside of the lenses. Of course, then I had to test it, using the Lime 2 to act as the light meter.

I had a very, very short roll of Exeter 400 left. It was so short I had to add a leader to load it into the camera…what a good idea, I should try that again and get extra shots. I also tried a couple of cokin filters, which was not a good idea as you can’t see the effects in the view finder.

Anyway, here they are.

I told the owner of the results…he didn’t want it back and wanted to gift it to me. So I have another Canonet. But it is mine now, soo…

Maybe that will give me more impetus to use it 🙂