Inheritance

I inherited a camera a few years ago. Well, the one catch to this inheritance is that in order to use it, I had to fix it. Quite the inheritance I know.

It's an older camera, a film SLR. Yeah, pretty old technology, but still a good camera. I used it while in high school when I took a Black and White Photography class and it worked fine during that time. It wasn't until I was using it some months later that it decided to break. The shutter wouldn't work and every time that I used the advance lever, it would not only advance, but it'd release the shutter. A kind of 2 for 1 deal. Definitely not how it's supposed to work. That was when I inherited it.

I sure didn't know what was wrong with the camera or how to fix it. I had every intention of taking it to get fixed, and even tried to get other people to take it in after I'd left for college. Didn't happen and it ended up just sitting around for a few years until I went back last month. I had been thinking about it for a while and decided while I was in Maine that I should bring it back with me to get fixed since it wasn't happening while it was sitting on a shelf. So, it made a nice trip back to Utah. We must have looked pretty silly carrying two cameras around the airport with us. Probably looked like we couldn't share the same camera. His and Her cameras. How cute.

So, I sat down yesterday trying to think of stuff to do and thought of the camera. "Hmmm can I fix that on my own?" I consulted what Ashton calls "the guru," AKA Google. I actually found quite a bit of information and it seems like I'm not the only person who has had trouble with the shutter although I saw nothing about the advance lever doing double duty. I read forum type websites where people would ask a question about how to fix their camera and it was amusing to see that the first step that everyone suggest was, "check the battery" or "buy a new battery." I do have to wonder how many times that someone thought that something was wrong with the camera and all it needed was a battery. Are these people speaking from personal experience?

Well, the battery was fine, amazingly so since it's been in there for who knows how many years. Had to wait for Ashton to get done work though before opening up the camera. I tried to open it myself, but couldn't because the screws were so tight. I have a bad habit of stripping screws so I figured that I should wait so I'd have someone else to blame in case that happened. How bad would it look to walk into the camera repair shop and have them look at it and say, "It looks like the screws are stripped."

"Umm yeah. I tried to fix it myself. Couldn't get past the first step." I can just hear the repair person's next thought, "Stupid girl can't even use a screwdriver."

Yeah, it sounds much better to blame your husband. "Yeah. My husband tried to fix it himself. I wanted to bring it in, but you know how guys are."

"Ah, yes. That explains everything."

In the end, it took Ashton using tiny screwdrivers and pliers to get it undone and no screws were stripped.

It was fun to see what was in there and in the end it appears that the plastic cover for the circuit board had caused the problem. How do we know that? Well, we moved it, put the battery back in and it worked. We put the cover back on how it was and it didn't work. Simpliest operation every preformed. Didn't have to mess around with any wires and it didn't cost any money to fix.