Just spent 45 minutes trying to fix a light leak I caused myself

I was messing with my Pentax K1000 and thought I'd re-foamed the back correctly, but after three rolls of hazy photos I finally realized I'd left a tiny gap near the hinge. Anyone else spend way too long chasing a problem that was totally my own fault?

2 comments

2 Comments

torres.drew20d ago

...and the worst part is you probably checked everything else first before you circled back to that hinge gap, right? I mean, I keep telling myself "check the simple stuff first" but I always end up going down a rabbit hole of cleaning lenses or checking light seals on the mirror box before I finally look at the back. Did you at least manage to save any of those rolls with some heavy post-processing or were they total write-offs? Because I've had that heartbreak where you look at the negatives and it's just this sad little fog line running through every frame and you know exactly when you screwed up. What was your first clue that made you finally check the hinge area?

scott.mia20d ago

wait, did anyone else here try using a piece of electrical tape over that hinge gap as a quick fix? @torres.drew I know it sounds janky but I had a roll of half-frame shots that were all foggy on one side and I taped the hinge area on my Canonet and it actually worked well enough to finish the roll without making it worse. mine was a total write-off though, the fog line was right through some really nice candids from a friend's wedding and no amount of scanning could save it. the thing that tipped me off was the fog being exactly the same width and placement on every single frame, which made me stop blaming my developing process and start poking at the camera body itself.