Diana Mini!

My diana mini and I finally got acquainted.

Right after I got her I took her out for a spin, but quickly found her ripping my film. The film advance wouldn't turn and after forcing it (hey, I read the "don't force it" stuff, but there's that part of ya that thinks "oh, nothing bad will really happen...")and having my fingers turn purple from trying to push sooo hard I finally heard the film rip in half. I tried it a few more times and finally turned to ye old internet. I found a tutorial on how to take the camera apart and put it back together that was supposed to fix the film advance problem. But after trying that twice and it not working we quickly realized the problem was much simpler than that!

On the inside there is a film pressure plate, which is basically a thing to hold the film flat against the inside and keep it running smooth, and that is what causing the problems. Too much pressure is not a good thing! It was pushing the film against the sprockets too hard causing the sprocket holes to just tear, then jam. So, we removed the plate and ta-da! she works like magic! But since I wasn't 100% sure that the camera would still work correctly Kevin and I went outside and shot 48 test pictures.

The results...

Triple exposures!!

When we picked up the film from CVS the lady was like "Uhh, not sure if you want to refuse these or not, they're double exposures." DUH I WANT THEM. I'm so stoked with how these turned out. I immediately loaded another roll and am currently waiting on a non-rainy day to get outside and experiment!

You can find the diana mini here if you're interested in playing with one for yourself.
xoxo