Collected two rolls of test shots from the lab today and one roll turned out to be good news and the other … a total disaster.
Let’s have the good news first. Picked up this old LC-A which the previous owner claimed to be producing Lensbaby-like results. Being a big Lensbaby fan, I took a look at the photos he took and pretty amused at the results. Only a small part in the center of the frame seems in focus, and the sides are all ultra-super-fuzzy. Did it Iike it? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe for a couple of photos, but not a whole roll.
Someone mentioned that it could be a lens element being inverted, thus causing the weird effect. So I decided to buy the camera for some experiments and should it work, I have a cheap LC-A to play with and at the same time not worry that much when I let Fitzand mess with it.
Opened up the front assembly of the LC-A yesteday and luckily the lens assembly section was not very tightly secured. I saw 3 pieces of glass that could be taken out, and after analysing them, apparently only one of them has the possiblility to be inverted. Taking a deep breath, I inverted that element and put the LC-A back into it’s original condition, loaded a roll of cheap Top Crest cheap negative I found from ebay and got it processed (after some random test shots). The camera is behaving like a normal LC-A now! Yeah!!!
And the sad case? A roll of Ilford XP2 was trashed as a result of my first test roll on the Holga WPC. Well all I can do is blame myself for not putting more effort in estimating the exposure time needed, and took all of the shots indoor on a rainy day. Painful lesson … arghhhh!!! All the shots were way underexposed. Probably give it another go this weekend … outdoors!
Whee!!! congrats on a super cheap bargain on the LC-A
you’re great!