Something for nothing?

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It's not often these days that you get something without paying for it, but I think I managed that little trick recently. I've been buying a few photo bits and pieces from a little junk shop near where I work. Anyway I went in one day, and the lady running it said 'Why don't you take all these photo bits and pieces off me as they won't sell?' and then handed me a large bag containing an assortment of unpromising items. However, in and amongst the broken disc cameras and oddities were two typical AF compacts probably of the 80's. One, a Ricoh proved to have corroded battery contacts, but the other a Konica powered up when I inserted a couple of AA batteries. So when I was looking for a camera that could be stuck in a bag on the back of my Harley for an upcoming road trip, it seemed ideal. I had just bought from my local supermarket a bag containing five Fuji 24 exposure films, so loaded one up in the camera, and shoved two others in my bag. My first destination was the town of Taunton where there were plenty of Harleys and classic cars to shoot followed by Taunton carnival which was amazing with lots of brightly lit floats in procession. I shot away, and then looked at my exposure counter, only to realise I was way past 24. I immediately thought that I had mis-loaded the film, so to save embarrassment further decided to rewind, and see what had happened. Imagine my surprise when on inspection it turned out to be a 36 exposure film not a 24! I then looked at the others, and they were 36's too. Great stuff, 50% more film to play with. The results when processed were pleasing, and although I missed the benefit of manual control, there were also times when auto-everything was useful too. As in the following picture which was one of the last three on the second roll, so could reasonably qualify as a free picture on a free camera. I did of course pay for processing. Not bad eh?

The rest of the pics can be seen here: http://gallery.me.com/sfb_dot_com#100016&bgcolor=black&view=grid

Regards to All

Andy