Goodbye ME
I’m not an audiophile, but I do like tinkering, and that’s why I began a project to build my own turntable for playing vinyl records. That project is ongoing, and I’ll report on it in more detail at a later date. But this penchant for tinkering has also spilled over into the realm of photography, and since the early days, I’ve indulged in attempts to make various bits of photographic equipment.
My first enlarger, cobbled together in my bedroom when I was a teenager, used items salvaged from a model railway and a telescope. A section of track served as the column (the enlarger was laid out horizontally instead of vertically). I can’t remember what I used as a light source, but I remember the lens was the objective lens from a telescope, and was mounted on an open box car from the model railway. I would move it forth and back along the track until the image was in focus, and then put some photographic paper at the appropriate location for exposure. It actually produced recognizable images, though none of them survive. This would have been some time in the 1960s.
More recently, I must have received a blow to the head, or perhaps someone laced my tea with LSD, because it suddenly occurred to me that it would be a good idea to learn to repair cameras “in my spare time”. At the time I had been grimly resisting what I perceived to be a lemming like rush toward the cliffs of digital photography, holding on for dear life to the old equipment and the old ways of doing things.
To this end, I did some research and found a suitable candidate camera, the Pentax ME. In short order I had a collection of these, all non-working, which would serve as sacrificial lambs. I bought some essential tools and set to work.
To begin with, I tackled a couple of lenses. At a swap meet, I found a Pentax 24mm lens that was completely clouded by internal fungus on multiple elements. Otherwise, it was in excellent condition. I disassembled it until I had access to all the affected elements, and was able to clean them almost completely. The fungus had left no permanent damage, except that it had removed some the coating on one internal surface. I put it back together, and found that it would no longer focus to infinity. Disassemble and reassemble. Again. Now it would focus to infinity, but there was a fingerprint on one of the elements. Disassemble, clean, and reassemble. Third time was the charm, and I sold it for a good price. That was encouraging.
Another lens was a 28mm Kiron that someone gave me. There was something wrong with the focusing mechanism, making the barrel impossible to turn. Other than that, it seemed very clean. I pulled it apart and found that the lubricant was all gummed up inside. I cleaned out the old gunk and re-lubricated it, and it was right as rain. Another success.
But that’s about as far as it went. I put my dead cameras aside while I worked on other projects, and gradually forgot about them. I bought a working ME from a pawn shop, and had it cleaned and calibrated. I wanted to use it for a while to see if it would serve as the basis for a complete SLR system. I collected a few lenses, and it seemed to be working out fine, until I took it to NYC one long weekend.
On my return I discovered that the meter was on the fritz, and had ruined most of my shots. I had also begun to resent the time spent at the color lab, dropping film off, waiting for processing and picking it up again. And I was growing frustrated with hours spent numbering and filing negatives, laboriously scanning them, removing dust specs in photoshop. I was painfully aware that I wouldn’t have to do any of it if I would just switch to digital.
So began the process of getting rid of all my film cameras. I’m not done yet, but getting there gradually. This week I finally sold my collection of dead Pentax ME bodies, and now only a few bits and pieces remain. Goodbye ME, and goodbye waiting in line at the color lab. Goodbye cutting negatives into fives and numbering them. Goodbye scanning, and goodbye spotting. Goodbye loupe and lightbox. Goodbye film.