My lesson-of-the-day on Thursday was that the Pentax ES II might not be just a temperature princess, but like its owner, a bit of a princess-princess. For the first time since winter, I had one frame where the shutter just stayed open, and in a new twist, several frames where it underexposed.

Before I knew it, after developing on Friday, I had an eBay tab open and was searching for other ES II bodies. I like the early-1970s Takumars enough and like having aperture priority metering enough that I would not want to go without.

Fortunately for our bank account, cooler heads prevailed by Saturday morning and, looking around older discussion boards, I found a message stating that the camera’s exposure compensation dial has a variable resistor inside of it and giving the dial several quick turns back-and-forth ought to restore reliable contact.

As for this roll?

sigh

While not quite as overcooked as the one I developed on Wednesday, I once again tempted fate with higher temperatures and short development times: 3½ minutes at almost 25°C leaves precious little room for error and I once again found myself with runaway highlights and overdevelopment.

I must say: between my struggle to maintain consistent colour balance, one overcooked roll, and another overcooked roll complemented by a suddenly-cranky-again camera, it was not exactly a happy time in hobby land this past week.

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