Good evening everybody Not very nice story to tell but with a educational thought at the end. Being sure I managed to learn how to operate my MX (how hard can it be) I loaded it with film a shot to have some shooting. I did everything in the way the manual tells to do - I've putted the end of film beetween the pins, advanced couple times checking the rewind knob at the same time (I've used to shot with zenit camera) - everything seemed OK. So I did some shooting. When Christmas came I still had some frames left so I decided to burn them with a family (my MZ-M was loaded with B&W film). Did some shooting and realised I'va allready reached frame 36 - so I rewound the film. It happened very easily - even too easily. I got scared that I might have rip the film from the cartdridge due to winding over the last frame but the film seemed to be OK back in the cartdridge. Today I went to the photo lab to have it developed. To my great dismay it turned out, that the whole shooting exposed only one frame and a third. The firs frame was exposed correctly but next was done only after moving by one third of the frame, than every frame was done in the same spot. The rest of the film is clean. I'm sure I've checked the rewind knob at the beginning but don't recall doing it later. Is it possible for film to slip from take-up spool during shooting? How deep should I push the leader between the pins? Or maybe is it the camera fault? I did some tests with an old film today and it seems to work OK.
Now the educational part. I've read in the past not to photograph anything important with a new camera and I found the hard way how true it is. I still have a christmas tree at home but the atmosphere and presents are gone. Also developed the film from MZ-M and it seems that every frame is at least printable (can't really judge exposure from the neg). Should have used this one... Another thing - I've seen lately few posts on the list with a statement that SC-1 focusing screen is hard to find. Is it because it is MX focusing screen (are they hard to find in general) or it is because it is the one that was supplied with the camera (it looks like the one to me) so not many of them were produced due to low demand? Just wanted to share the story - maybe it will be of some advice to someone. Maciej Marchlewski - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
