As I suspected, my Ansco folder camera does have light leaks -- several in fact. That's the trouble with these old 'gems', some of them look good at first but with more usage you begin to stress things that held together on the shelf but not so much when you are pushing and pulling them. On any folder camera what gives out most of all is the bellows that, after years or decades of use or even storage, is suddenly being stretched and constricted every time you pop it open to take a photograph. I probably was an idiot for not really checking hard at first but since my first roll turned out okay I'm putting most of the blame on my enthusiasm.

I've shot a few rolls now with the Ansco Speedex, enough to form an opinion on the shooting style (though I still have only received the one roll back).

Compactness

I admit that I'm in love with the idea that I am carrying around a medium format camera that slips easily into the front pocket of any of my shorts or jeans. However, it is bulky and heavy. If you remember the days of the first Sony Walkmen, it's like that though slimmer. Still, it is compact enough that I wouldn't hesitate to take it with me anywhere I go (except perhaps dancing) and is a no brainer to slip into the camera bag where it takes up 1/8th the space of its larger EOS cousin.

I'm trying to classify this post as a 'tip' so here goes.

Don't throw away that P/C cable.

I have a love-hate relationship with P/C cables going back to my first flash trigger days, back when I was using the dreaded 'disposable' Gadget Infinity 16-channel triggers. The problem -- for me -- with those triggers was that they relied upon these flimsy little P/C cables and tips that connected the trigger with either a flash with a female P/C port or a hotshoe-adapter that allowed the trigger to send a fire signal to the flash. I hated these things. They always came loose, they sometimes got dirty, they broke, never worked, etc. There are service suppliers out there who sell P/C 'conditioners' that you use to clean out the tips. I was overjoyed when I went to hotshoe-interface only triggers.

As I alluded to in my last post, my newest camera, the Ansco Speedex 4.5, is quite a step back in time in camera technology. While I am quite used to adjusting exposure and shutter speed manually on my 30D (and on my loaner 20D), the lack of a rangefinder on the Ansco remains a huge challenge. The viewfinder is just plain glass, helping you frame the 6x6 square area. There is nothing but a distance scale to help you decide if the subject is in focus or not. This is only a small step up from the Holga's mountains -> Mommy daddy -> head distance scale. The Ansco distance scale goes from 3ft -> 3.5 ft -> 4,5,6,8,10,30 to infinity.

One of the last photo ops I had on Hornby Island was at Heron Rocks, a unique intertidal zone where the rocks are sand and wave-worn into alien type shapes. But at this visit we were showing friends and then stopped on the rocks for some portraits. Here again I'm using Adri's XTi and a Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8, a lens I also own and praise for its quick focusing and sharpness throughout its range. It's a dandy portrait zoom.

Aperture priority and available light

On an overcast day such as this the light was really nice; as they say: one big giant softbox. I simply set the camera on aperture priority (AV) to either emphasize or de-emphasize the background (open up for shallow depth-of-field; close for deep) and started shooting. I found the XTi was generally good about avoiding absurd shutter speeds to keep the exposure and was mostly satisfied with how aperture priority worked.

Shooting rapidfire

I'm not sure what the mood was but I felt playful and with each composition I started shooting rapid fire, backing up the buffer a few times. For some time now I've been shooting deliberately because I've instinctively waited for flashes to recharge. Here, just using natural light, I was under no such restriction. The results were dozens more choices to make and less inhibition from the subjects: Adri and Sarah. Also, when a difference between an acceptable shot and a mediocre one can be a certain expression or dreaded eye-closed, having a burst of frames available to you is wonderful.

Since my camera committed suicide I've had the nagging feeling that I had nowhere near approached the 100,000 rated actuations that the shutter should have held up to. I realize this is the bell curve but I still was curious to see where on the curve my poor 30D ended up on.

The 30D unfortunately gives you no native way to figure out the actuations. Some cameras will show you the number on the EXIF which, if you don't have a viewer that will show it for you, might come out in the Flickr "more properties" page for that image once it is uploaded.