My plan was to bring the Olympus XA to Halloween last night. The nasty on-camera flash coupled with the contrast of Kodak Ektar would have been a pretty good match for the things I would be running into.
But after I fired off the first test shot, the shutter locked up. This is something that's happened before. Luckily it's pretty easy to fix, but it still requires unloading the film and removing the bottom plate. Somehow I figured out that there was a tab in there that doesn't always return to its cocked position after advancing the film. A quick poke with a screwdriver loosens it up and the camera returns to normal, at least for a while.
While I had the camera apart, I decided I'd finally take a look at the top part of the camera and tidy it up a bit. The viewfinder was getting kind of hazy and the sliding cover could also use a cleaning. The top of the camera is slightly more complicated to remove than the bottom, but I managed to get it off eventually. There was evidence that the previous owner had also done this in the past -- screws had signs of screwdrivering and things were suspiciously clean for a 35 year old camera.
After everything was all nice and clean, I started putting it all back together. I was surprised I hadn't broken anything or lost anything but right then, I knocked over the cup that I had been keeping my screws in and lost one. I guess that's par for the course for any electronics repair job I have no business doing.
In any case, everything is working nice and smooth now and it's loaded with a fresh roll of Ektar. I don't really have any plans for what to shoot with it, though.
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